The results of a new study draw parallels between global warming and declining mental health.
Published Monday in the journal PNAS, the study looked at mental health issues and compared them to climate data in search of trends.
"We find that shifting from monthly temperatures between 25 degrees Celsius and 30 degrees Celsius to greater than 30 degrees Celsius increases the probability of mental health difficulties by 0.5 percentage points, that 1 degree Celsius of 5-year warming associates with a 2 percent point increase in the prevalence of mental health issues, and that exposure to Hurricane Katrina associates with a 4 percent point increase in this metric," the study's abstract reads.
According to the L.A. Times, the team led by MIT data scientist Nick Obradovich asked almost two million people this question between 2002 and 2012: "Now thinking about your mental health, which includes stress, depression, and problems with emotions, for how many days during the past 30 days was your mental health not good?"
The researchers examined the data gleaned from the questions and paired it up with climate data that was local to each respondent. The researchers found that women and people in the low-income demographic are more apt to develop mental health issues because of climate change, for example.
"We find that experience with hotter temperatures and added precipitation each worsen mental health, that multiyear warming associates with an increased prevalence of mental health issues, and that exposure to tropical cyclones, likely to increase in frequency and intensity in the future, is linked to worsened mental health," the study's authors wrote.
"These results provide added large-scale evidence to the growing literature linking climate change and mental health."
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