Preparedness is psychological: how heat is weathered together
Extreme heat, like loss, requires collective mental & emotional support practices.
Jose A. Bernat Bacete/Getty Images
Destructive heat is wrecking havoc earlier in the year in much of the global south, and is threatening Europe and North America in more pronounced ways than ever. The past two summers broke heat records here in California’s inland regions. Dozens of local warehouse workers were hospitalized last summer for heatstroke; one person died after working in an Amazon warehouse under the company’s crueler-than-usual demands for Prime Day. Heat is proven to increase anxiety and depression, make it harder to sleep, and exacerbate mental and emotional crises. Monthly temperature correlates with suicide and homicide rates – the hotter the average temp, the higher rates of people taking their or others’ lives.1 The mental health effects of heat waves are well-researched and increasingly severe.
Said succinctly, heat waves are a major threat to our physical and psychological wellbeing and safety.
Thankfully, more practitioners and agencies than ever recognize this. But while extreme heat planning is increasing, most of us still don’t think very proactively about it. Perhaps that’s because, on the surface, heat impacts are experienced maybe the most unequally of any climate disaster. Some people avoid heat’s worst effects completely; it might not seem so bad for those who can afford to run the AC even higher, rack up energy bills, drive around in air conditioned cars, or travel to cooler locales. But this ignores the ways we do deal with it collectively: if people at large are experiencing increased anxiety, aggressiveness, and unwell-ness all at once, we will all encounter heat’s toll one way or another.
I say this not to scare us, but to suggest that seeing extreme heat through a mental and emotional wellbeing lens helps presence our interconnectedness. It also encourages us to ask the question: how might we mentally and emotionally prepare each other for the ever-increasing potential of very hot days?
Knowing in advance how and why we’re feeling a certain way, and what we can do to support ourselves and each other through it, are critical steps towards psychological wellbeing. This doesn’t necessarily prevent the difficult effects on our brains/bodies, but it does give us more agency in how we navigate it.
Sometimes, of course, we just need to react and intervene at a moment of major loss. But our health and safety rest upon trusting that there’s shared wisdom around how we’ll respond and be responded to. This reminds me of what I feel is at the crux of my grief-guiding work: we do best when we plan ahead for challenges, practice together, and embed care into the fabric of how we work and live.
I often turn to Rebecca Solnit’s book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, where she reminds us that we humans are incredibly well-equipped to collectively respond to loss. In a chapter exploring Charles Fritz’ work in disaster sociology, Solnit reveals how facing disasters — and I’ll extend this to facing loss at-large — leads to “channel(s) for intimate communication and expression, provid(ing) a major source of physical and emotional support and reassurance.”
Crises and loss are terrible and of course should be avoided if possible. But as they arise, we should value our responses, for moving through them can lead us towards unified action, healing, and wellbeing. This is why I imagine a future where healthcare invests in climate resilience as a universal preventative health measure. And, knowing that some degrees of loss are unavoidable, we all aught to “invest” in personal and collective grief guiding.
So in the spirit of practicing with each other, I offer just a few suggestions around mental preparedness for extreme heat:
If you manage a team, expect that work performance will dip and people will need more rest when the temperature is hotter (and maybe this expectation adjustment can be an opportunity for everyone to practice alleviating shame around productivity).
If you’re rooted in local community, make a map of your nearby cool spots and encourage an “if-it-hits-x-degrees” meetup there (and try and coordinate other services to be there too).
And while May is nearly over, consider using Mental Health Awareness Month and other wellbeing initiatives as a programming opportunity around psychologically preparing for summer heat and climate crises.
Actions like these are key to wellbeing, coupled with a wide world of physical preparedness actions like hacks to keep your home cooler, creating shade structures, using cool materials in construction (like pavements, walls, and roofs), advocating locally for healthy and affordable housing, and so many more. We hold the knowledge of how to do this; we just have to do it together.
(A fantastic) illustration by María Medem, from “How Heat Waves Take a Toll on Mental Health”. New York Times. Aug 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/19/well/mind/heat-mental-health.html