ITRC PNW Transformational Resilience Network

When we don’t have support and space to grieve significant losses, the grief stays stuck inside us and takes a toll on our mental and physical health.

By Elaine Miller-Karas MSW, LCSW Building Resiliency to Trauma Psychology Today, September 30, 2022 Mental health can suffer after extreme climate events. KEY POINTS Mental health conditions exacerbated by natural disasters include post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety. After a disaster, the number of people needing assistance from the mental health systems strains or exceeds community capacity. There are simple strategies helpers can use to help survivors restore...

This is a request for your organization to endorse the Community Mental Wellness and Resilience Act (CMWRA) developed by Representative Paul Tonko (D-NY). This is the legislation the ITRC has been working on for two years (and was previously called the Resilience for All Act) Rep. Tonko plans to introduce the CMWRA in Congress in late October . Before he does we would like to gather a wide and diverse set of endorsements from national, regional, state, tribal, and local organizations. To...

LAST CHANCE TO REGISTER For Next Tuesday's Sept. 13 Webinar on the Need To Use a Public Health Approach in Communities to Build Population Mental Wellness & Resilience for the Climate Crisis The Webinar Will Describe the ITRC Community of Practice (CoP) that Begins in October on How to Organize and Operate Public Mental Health Initiatives in Communities. To register for the September 13 webinar go to the ITRC website: http://www.theresourceinnovationgroup.org/ The Climate Crisis Requires...

how close the Amazon forest is to a tipping point of “savannization” and the consequences of that for the maintenance of the world’s largest tropical rainforest.

By Frida Berrigan , August 23, 2022, Waging Nonviolence My beach reading stack was less whodunits and guilty pleasures and more of a Climate Change 101 survey course. But in this summer of widespread drought, heatwaves melting roads , super storm events, a deadlocked international climate meeting, the protracted political saga of the senator in Big Coal’s back pocket, and lots of other top-of-the-fold climate catastrophe news, my deep dive was in the service of survival and wide-eyed hope...

By Hannah Seo, Illustration: María Medem, The New York Times, August 19, 2022 Tens of millions of people across the United States have been enduring heat wave after heat wave this summer, in what feels like an unrelenting succession of humid days and scorching temperatures. While there’s no denying that extreme heat and humidity can be physically uncomfortable, research suggests that such conditions can be trying on your psychological well-being, too. “We see across the whole spectrum of...

While the scientific community has come to unprecedented international scientific agreement on the causes of climate change and what needs to be done to stop it, there remains significant contention about the issue.

Like Kintsugi, the Japanese pottery tradition that mends broken shards with golden lacquer, movements toward repair of these various ruptures can create stronger ‘containers’ for the pain of individuals and communities and help us move toward essential action.

The ITRC will launch a "Community of Practice" (CoP) this October to educate, connect, and empower people throughout industrialized nations to organize and operate community-based culturally accountable initiatives that use a public health approach to enhance the entire population's capacity for mental wellness and transformational resilience for the climate crisis. You can learn about the CoP by attending a free webinar on July 28. Why Prioritize Forming Community-Based Population-Level...

This seminar presents new approaches for soil and water conservation in different crops across California and the Midwest US.

By Victoria St. Martin, Photo: Robert Nickelsburg/Getty Images, Inside Climate News, June 16, 2022 For years, research journals devoted to the earth sciences have warned of the dire consequences that could result from global warming and pollution going unchecked. Now, one of the nation’s oldest medical journals has committed itself to increasing the public’s knowledge about the health effects of the planet’s changing climate. Beginning with the issue published Thursday, The New England...