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Prioritise mental health in climate policies: GPs
As summer nears, GPs have travelled to Canberra to urge MPs to give mental health a seat at the climate crisis policy table.
(L – R) Pramudie Gunaratne, Matthew Barton, Fiona Charlson, Cybele Dey, Ged Kearney, Carol Berry, Kate Wylie, Jerome Laxale, Zali Steggall, Nicole Boele and Emma Comer at Parliament House.
Worsening climate change is fuelling a mental health crisis, say GPs, who are urging the country’s leaders to put mental health at the forefront of Australia’s climate and health policies.
GP and Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA) executive director Dr Kate Wylie also called for better training and support for GPs to address the ‘immense mental health burden’ of climate change.
‘If we’re not resourced to treat that, if we’re not trained adequately to treat that, then that’s going to have detrimental outcomes for our patients,’ she told newsGP.
‘And of course, that’s our primary concern as GPs.’
It comes as new research, published in The Lancet, revealed that in Australia, the annual number of deaths attributable to heat increased 44% between 1990–99 and 2012–21 with an annual average of 980 deaths.
It found that in 2024, heat exposure resulted in a loss 175 million hours of potential labour, equating to an associated loss of $8.4 billion of lost income.
With the Bureau of Meteorology predicting a warmer-than-average summer, DEA revealed ‘compelling new evidence’ of the harm climate change is already causing to Australians’ mental health.
At a meeting in Canberra’s Parliament House on Tuesday with politicians, including the Parliamentary Friends of Climate Action, DEA released an updated version of How climate affects mental health in Australia, a report it first released in May this year.
The update includes four significant recent events and reports:
The report states that the Australian health system is already under increased strain from ‘the mental health impacts of climate change’.
‘Almost half of Australians are expected to experience a mental illness at some point in their life, with costs estimated to exceed $190 billion per year,’ it said.
‘Children and young people are at particular risk, with climate change impacts over recent decades linked to declines in child and youth mental health.’
Given the sober findings of the report’s latest additions, effectively addressing the mental impact of such information means that mental health professionals need ‘a seat at the table’ of policy development, says Dr Wylie.
‘When we see that the
National Climate Risk Assessment says climate change has severe mental health impacts, but then the climate health expert advisory group has no psychiatry input into that group, we see this as an easily rectifiable gap,’ she said.
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The National Climate Risk Assessment says that the impacts to health will be severe by 2050, including the impacts of mental health.
‘They also talk about having “climate sacrifice zones” [unliveable zones] in Northern Australia and things like that. This is something that’s going to get bigger and harder. Now’s the time to address it.’
In the RACGP’s latest
Health of the Nation Report, 71% of GPs named mental health as a main reason for patient visits.
This means GPs need to be better equipped and supported to help their patients, says Dr Wylie, with additional training and systemic support through Medicare.
‘There needs to be uniform training in climate change and health, including mental health, for the whole health and aged care sector, including general practice,’ she said.
‘We’d also like to see climate change, eco grief, etc, included in Medicare item numbers for GP mental health plans, as a reason for being able to have these, because that’s not there now.
‘We treat mental health all the time, we see more mental health than anything else. So having that capacity for us to address it with our ongoing mental health management, I think it’s really important. And it’s certainly a gap.
Dr Wylie said the impacts of climate change on a patient’s mental health could have a range of triggers or presentations – and GPs are at the ‘frontline’ of treatment.
‘That could be climate anxiety and eco grief, or the mental health impacts from heat and heat waves – which we know increases risks of anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation – or it could be the person who has had to fight a fire, or a South Australian dealing with the algal bloom,’ she said.
‘Any of the other myriad of health impacts that we’re seeing from climate change and the knock-on effects they have for mental health, GPs are going to be at the frontline of treating these people.’
A further step by the Australian health sector to address climate change was the recent launch of a new resource aimed at decarbonising the national health system,
Accelerating towards net zero: A guide for the Australian health system.
On 17 October, more than 200 leaders from health, government and academia gathered at Alfred Health in Melbourne for the launch of the guide, which provides evidence-based advice for healthcare organisations working towards net zero.
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