ITRC Seeks Organizational and Individual Endorsements for New Climate Change Mental Wellness and Resilience Policy!
To read the complete policy and make individual or organizational endorsements go to: http://www.theresourceinnovationgroup.org/
Why the Need to Enact a Climate Change Mental Wellness and Resilience Policy?
The International Transformational Resilience Coalition (ITRC) seeks organizational and individual endorsements for its new Climate Change Mental Wellness and Resilience Policy. The policy is urgently needed at the local, state, and federal levels because global temperatures will, in the not too distant future, rise above the 2.7 F (1.5C) temperature threshold scientists say will greatly accelerate destructive climate impacts. Left unaddressed, the more frequent and extreme disasters that will be intermixed with continual cascading disruptions to the ecological, social, and economic systems people rely on for food, water, incomes, and other basic needs will produce mental health and psycho-social-spiritual problems far beyond anything modern society has ever experienced. The harmful psychological, emotional, and behavioral reactions will profoundly affect daily functioning, and threaten everyone's health, safety, and wellbeing. They are also likely to cause people to withdraw into a self-protective survival mode that makes it very difficult to do what is needed to reduce the climate emergency to manageable levels.
For years, the U.S. mental health system has been dysfunctional. It also focuses on treating individual disorders, not building community-wide capacity to prevent them. Clinical therapy and direct service programs, while important, will therefore not be able to help millions of people prevent or heal from the coming tsunami of climate-generated mental health and psycho-social-spiritual problems. New thinking and new approaches are urgently needed to 'future-proof' psychological and emotional wellbeing.
The ITRC Climate Change Mental Wellness and Resilience Policy
The ITRC policy calls for the establishment of community-centered initiatives nationwide to build population-level mental wellness and resilience for a wide range of climate change-generated traumas and toxic stresses. The enabling infrastructure of the new approach is the formation of a Resilience Coordinating Council (RCC) in every community or region. Its purpose is to bring together a diverse set of uncommon partners to co-create innovative age and culturally appropriate actions that teach everyone mental wellness and resilience information and skills, establish and connect quality social support networks, transform unhealthy norms, build group and community strengths, and construct a local culture that enables people to safely overcome distress and find meaning, purpose, and hope in the midst of ongoing climate adversities. The RCC should work closely with and refer people who experience severe disorders to behavioral health programs.
The tools and methods involved with building mental wellness and resilience were developed for non-climate related psychological and emotional traumas. The new policy will therefore help prevent and heal many types of mental health and psycho-social-spiritual problems beyond those generated by the climate emergency. Go to the links above to read the complete policy proposal and endorse it.
Comments (0)