A climate theatre producer, medical ethics professor, and Peruvian medical doctor discuss the relationship between climate change and mental health.
This webinar aimed to explore and shape the relationship between climate change and mental health.
The diverse discussion featured a Peruvian medical doctor & co-founder of The Social Research Platform on Mental Health in Latin America; the producer of a play that interweaves 75,000 years of humanity; and a senior lecturer working to integrate ethics and the humanities into global health research.
Our panellists call on their personal experiences and research to help us collectively explore how we approach the multifaceted relationship between mental health and the health of the environments and ecosystems.
Speakers
Dr Elaine C. Flores is a mixed-methods researcher, a Peruvian Medical doctor and a Research fellow in Planetary Health at the Centre on Climate Change and Planetary Health at LSHTM and the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health. She is a co-Principal Investigator in the Environment x Women’s Health project – ExWH and she is interested in the associated impacts on mental health of climatic events, especially for those already marginalised and with a gender scope.
David Finnigan is a writer, performer and game designer from Ngunnawal country in Australia. He works with climate and earth scientists and creates performances and games about climate change and planetary transformation. His most recent show, You’re Safe Til 2024: Deep History appeared at the Barbican in October 2022.
Dr Ayesha Ahmad is a Senior Lecturer in Global Health at St. Georges University of London. She holds a PhD in medical ethics and works to integrate ethics and the humanities into global health research and pedagogy. Ahmad is an expert in transcultural psychiatry and cross-cultural mental health, with a focus on contexts of conflict and humanitarian crisis resulting from disasters including environmental change. In her work, Dr Ahmad critically explores the notion of land trauma, as it is juxtaposed with a medicalised and biomedical paradigm of a temporal understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Chair
Lovro Savic is a student at Ethox investigating the characteristics and moral permissibility of various public health measures aimed at protecting and promoting mental health and well-being.
This event was part two of a four-part series entitled: “Physical, Mental, & Planetary Health: exploring the links between the environment and health.”
Jointly organised by Flourishing Diversity, the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health at the University of Exeter, and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities at the University of Oxford, this webinar series brings together voices from all over the world to explore humanity’s interconnection with lands, waters, forests, and fellow species, highlighting the crucial role that biocultural diversity plays in the health of people and populations.
A recording of part one, on the relationship between climate change and mental health, can be found here. Part three will cover “Health systems, culture, and climate change,” and part four will conclude the with a discussion about “Uniting the health of people and planet: paths to a sustainable and healthy future.”
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