Although researchers have known for a long time that the environment has a significant impact on health, research on environmental stressors has largely focused on mental and behavioral health outcomes. How communities are organized, how cities are planned, and how societies are supported all have implications for mental health. These population-level factors also have individual-level biological effects.
Climate change, toxic chemical exposures, and environmental justice all contribute to poor mental health at the individual or community level. This area is now being explored by researchers.
The February 2021 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee of Emerging Science for Environmental Health Decisions convened an event chaired by Dr. Gina Solomon, a PHIs, to explore emerging research on the relationship, beneficial or harmful, between environmental factors and mental illness. The workshop addressed the fundamental questions of what environmental exposures can have on mental health and how we can bridge environmental and psychological research to advance science, medicine and justice.
Dr. Solomon co-authored, along with members of workshop organizing committee, an article about the findings in the journal. Published in the journal Environmental Health PerspectivesThis work builds upon the workshop to present a synopsis of what is necessary to advance investigations at this intersection of mental and environment health.
The Interplay of Environmental Exposures and Mental Health. Setting an Agenda examines evidence that links psychiatric diseases to chemical exposures (especially to metals, pesticides and air pollution), environmental catastrophes (including chemical leaks, floods and wildfires) and climate change. It also notes the importance of natural spaces, especially in urban areas to promote mental health and resilience.
Action steps
The article concludes with a call for action for environmental and psychological health researchers. It includes concrete recommendations for how evidence-building, regulation and social justice can be improved around the linkage between the mental environment and physical environment. These are some of the actions:
- To examine the effects of psychopathology on psychological outcomes, research using an exposome framework is conducted. It measures all the exposures a person has received over their lifetime.
- Inclusion of mental health assessments, treatment infrastructure, and other public responses to natural or manmade disasters.
- To develop a national policy and regulatory framework that documents, measures, and incorporates cumulative effects of combined social and environmental stressors in regulatory decision-making.
- Expanding the field in environmental health science so that research and communication work include a focus upon natural disasters.
- Basic training on toxicants and psychology in training programs. Also includes basic training in mental health effects in toxicology and environmental science training programs.
- The development and promotion of new funding opportunities requires interdisciplinary teams from environmental science, mental and social health researchers. This includes not only understanding the mental health effects of environmental exposures, but also developing tools for community intervention, intervention, mitigation, and mitigation.
- NIH funding is available for interdisciplinary research centers in mental health and the environment. These centers include multi-year longitudinal investigations to illuminate the consequences across the lifespan.
- Assisting investigators of color in obtaining training opportunities and supporting them to lead new investigations in environmental health. Additional resources are available to support under-represented investigator recruitment at the early and mid-career stages.
Additional information
Setting an Agenda: The Interplay of Environmental Exposures with Mental HealthBy Aaron Reuben; Erika M.Manczak, Laura Y. Cabrera and Margarita Alegria.
More information about the workshop and the wider work of the Committee.