Interconnectedness and intergenerational dialogue: how the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement makes mental health a priority in the climate crisis

Photo Credits: American Red Cross  MHPSS after a climate disaster: how the Red Cross intervenes

An international journey to share best practices on mental health and climate change

To start the interview, we asked Ani and Marta to explain how the RCRC Movement operates to safeguard the mental health of people affected by the climate crisis.

To this question, Ani explains that the Armenian Red Cross has an active department about psychosocial support and a climate group, especially involved in advocacy activities. The approach of this group is “not only to solve the issue, but trying to feel the issue”. The group has grown over time, managing to go beyond the Red Cross environment to promote awareness-raising activities in schools and universities. Regarding her activity within the ECAYN, she stresses that climate change and mental health are among the key priorities for the Network, where they share best practices among National Societies. 

Marta starts by emphasising that, when it comes to climate change and mental health, all National Societies of the RCRC Movement have different stages of implementation and organisation. In the case of Portugal, there have been many bottom-up necessities, mainly from local branches that feel the need to interconnect mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) and climate change. Portugal has faced different extreme climate events in the last years, during which the Red Cross has deployed psychologists to support the affected population. However, psychologists trained in post-disaster relief are lacking. Other National Societies have more advanced guidelines on climate change and mental health, such as Norway, which makes it easier to connect the two topics. This is why it is important to share best practices and learn from each other. Both the IFRC and the ECAYN have developed diverse and comprehensive tools on different issues related to climate change and MHPSS that are easily replicable in other environments.

Affordability and lack of interest: why MHPSS is not a priority in the climate crisis

And what are the challenges in being able to deliver actions and strategies to tackle climate change and mental health?

For Ani, “the only challenge” is to interconnect climate change and mental health smoothly and how to communicate this to the community. Marta mentions four main challenges that the Portuguese Red Cross is currently facing, but that are common to other realities:

1. affordability of psychological support: it is very hard to afford a psychologist, which has become more a “privilege” for some people, instead of a right everyone should have;
2. mental health is not seen as a priority: people are not looking at the climate crisis as impacting their mental health, but they are facing the crisis in “survival mode”. This means protecting from heatwaves, not losing houses during wildfires, not losing crops during floods, etc. 
3. generational differences: younger people are generally more exposed to mental health topics and tend to be more aware about the impacts of climate change, for instance what eco-anxiety is. The same cannot be said for elderly people, who are less familiar with these issues and expressions;
4. lack of interconnectedness between climate change and mental health in national government strategies. “So, one thing is that the RCRC National Societies have this linkage in their strategies and plans (ed.), another thing is that governments actually take this linkage into consideration, which has been failing a lot”. Only when the governmental levels will take adequate consideration of climate change and MHPSS in their plans and strategies, then this will reach locally. 

Intergenerational dialogue and holistic approach as key strategies 

What do you think should be the strategies to communicate this topic to different age groups and is intergenerational dialogue an effective strategy?

The main strategy agreed by both speakers is connecting the two topics together, so that whenever there is a session on climate, the mental health dimension should be included and vice versa. Marta and Ani also state the need to raise awareness among the whole population, which for Marta is “bring consciousness to how they [climate change and mental health] connect”. Promoting intergenerational dialogue is also considered an effective strategy to raise awareness, to create a space for sharing feelings linked to the climate crisis and to understand the different, but similar, emotions that younger and older generations feel towards climate change. 

To conclude, we asked both speakers to state 3 actions and strategies the RCRC Movement, and more generally, communities need to take to face the climate change and mental health challenge.

For Marta, the key steps to take include structural change, an holistic approach to mental health in the climate crisis which does not leave anyone behind. In a similar way, Ani emphasises the need to interconnect climate change and mental health, to do more advocacy, also effectively summarised in the motto “speak up, you are not alone”.