“ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS AND MENTAL HEALTH”

The environment as one of the key determinants of mental health outcomes. Among the dimensions explored, climate change as a global environmental threat creates psychological distress and anxiety about the future. Climate change furthermore has direct impacts on mental health (e.g., heat stress) and indirectly affects social support systems, cultural traditions, and environmental conditions. Alternatively, a wealth of evidence suggests a relationship between human exposure to a wide range of chemical substances and negative mental health outcomes, including depression, anxiety ASD, ADHD and other psychiatric and neurological conditions.Insufficient daylight is reliably associated with increased depressive symptoms. Indirectly, the physical environment may influence mental health by altering psychosocial processes with known mental health sequelae. Personal control, socially supportive relationships, and restoration from stress and fatigue are all affected by properties of the built environment. More prospective, longitudinal studies and, where feasible, randomized experiments are needed to examine the potential role of the physical environment in mental health. Even more challenging is the task of developing underlying models of how the built environment can affect mental health. It is also likely that some individuals may be more vulnerable to mental health impacts of the built environment. Because exposure to poor environmental conditions is not randomly distributed and tends to concentrate among the poor and ethnic minorities, we also need to focus more attention on the health implications of multiple environmental risk exposure. 1. professor and Head,2Assistant professors,3&4Residents Index Medical College Indore