Why Build Human Resilience for Climate Change?
The many acute traumas and chronic toxic stresses generated by climate change are generating rising levels of severe anxiety, depression, PTSD, and other mental health problems in the U.S. and globally. They are also producing a boatload of psychosocial maladies including interpersonal aggression, crime, violence, and more. These harmful reactions undermine the health, safety, and security of individuals, families, organizations, communities, and entire societies. They also threaten to delay or block efforts to cut carbon emissions and reduce the climate crisis. The problems will worsen as global temperatures rise.
Yet, most climate programs fail to grasp or address these risks and remain focused on emission reductions and adapting physical infrastructure and natural resources to warmer temperatures. Most mental health, emergency response, and related programs concentrate on treating people during and after discrete disasters and neglect the increasing number of long-term climate change-enhanced physical, economic, social, and spiritual toxic stresses affecting people.
Missing from the U.S. and global response to climate change is an urgent need to launch preventative personal and psychosocial resilience-building initiatives. These initiatives must share knowledge, teach skills, and implement tools to help individuals and groups learn how to constructively cope with climate change-enhanced adversities, and use them as catalysts to learn, grow, and thrive. This conference is the first to explicitly focus on these critical issues.
What You Will Learn At The Conference:
· The personal mental health and psychosocial impacts of climate change on youth, adolescents, adults, and high-risk populations and why major preventative human resilience-building policies and programs are urgently needed to address the risks.
· Methods, policies, and benefits of building personal resilience for climate change-enhanced traumas and toxic stresses.
· Methods, policies, and benefits of building psychosocial resilience within all types of groups and organizations for climate change-enhanced traumas and toxic stresses.
· Methods, policies, and benefits of building psychosocial resilience within communities for climate change-enhanced traumas and toxic stresses.
Our All-Star List of Confirmed Speakers Includes:
· Dr. Jeff Stiefel, Executive Coordinator, Climate Change and Health for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security with an overview of the mental health & psychosocial impacts of climate change.
· Dr. Lise Van Susteren, forensic psychiatrist and author of The Psychological Effects of Global Warming in the US: Why the U.S. Mental Health System is Not Adequately Prepared on how the psychoanalytic impacts of climate change threaten communities, national security, and more.
· Dr. Daniel Aldrich, Co-Director of the Security and Resilience Studies Program at Northeastern University and author of Building Resilience: Social Capital in Post-Disaster Recovery on the importance of building robust social support networks for climate change.
· Dr. Sandra Bloom, psychiatrist, founder of the Sanctuary Institute, and author of Destroying Sanctuary and Restoring Sanctuary on how organizations and communities can use the Sanctuary Model to build resilience for climate change.
· Elaine Miller Karas, Executive Director of the Trauma Resource Institute and author of Building Resiliency to Trauma, The Trauma and Community Resiliency Models on how to use her models to build personal and group resilience.
· Trudy Townsend, former director of Creating Sanctuary in The Dalles, Oregon, on how to bring people together in a rural community to build psychosocial resilience for climate change and other traumas and stresses;
· Bob Doppelt, ITRC coordinator and author of Transformational Resilience: How Building Human Resilience for Climate Disruption Can Safeguard Society and Increase Wellbeing onhow to use the Resilient GrowthTM model to build human resilience for climate change.
· A panel of federal officials on how the federal government approaches building personal and psychosocial resilience for climate change;
· Other speakers to be announced!
Space Is Limited and We Expect a Sold Out Conference So Register Early to Ensure a Spot!
![International Conference on Building Human Resilience for Climate Change [Washington, DC]](https://www.pacesconnection.com/fileSendAction/fcType/0/fcOid/440407979098683142/primaryPicture/true/fodoid/440407979098683146/imageType/LARGE/inlineImage/true/itc.JPG "International Conference on Building Human Resilience for Climate Change [Washington, DC]")
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