Bushfire threat fans the flames of Anxiety
Suffering from Bushfire Anxiety? It’s currently very high in NSW, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. Climate Change Anxiety is also in the news as a more global condition …
The failure of national leaders to respond to the threat of bushfires and smoke affecting Sydney and NSW is worsening rising fear and anxiety, says Australia’s top expert on mental health and suicide prevention.
Professor Ian Hickie, the co-director of the Brain and Mind Centre at the University of Sydney, said the impact of these natural disasters – combined with the drought – was a “serious mental health issue”, largely ignored last week by politicians in Canberra.
Professor Ian Hickie says mental health should be taken as seriously as heart disease and cancer.
Sydney and NSW residents were in a “state of heightened anxiety” and facing a “prolonged period of unpredictable threats” with the situation expected to get worse, he said.
“All is not well and there is no sense of where it ends,” said Professor Hickie.
And being told by national leaders not to worry, or not think about the cause of these threats, was the worst way to deal with anxiety, he said.”It is the most unhelpful thing you can do [for someone with anxiety],” said Professor Hickie.
A report by the World Health Organisation released last week found few of the 101 countries it surveyed were doing enough to prepare for the effects of climate change on physical and mental health.
A Recent Facebook Post About Bushfire Anxiety
“I’ve been struggling on a personal level around how to come to terms with the bushfires. When the fires were only a few kilometres away and I evacuated in December 2019 I realised there was a possibility my property and home would be destroyed. We got lucky and the winds saved us. But I know as I look out over my land that one day they will be here. Since that time I have watched in horror the news that shows so many who also evacuated and then did lose everything.
“I have had many emotions including: Feeling uncomfortable and guilty about spending a nice Christmas and New Years at home in Byron whilst fires are raging and destroying houses and livelihoods in the south of the state. Waking with a sense of anxiety in the middle of the night and wondering if this heat, drought and destruction are a new normal and if the apocalypse many have predicted is upon us. I found myself slipping into depression wondering if it was all hopeless. I felt the frustration and anger as I witnessed a gross lack of leadership at the highest levels and political bickering, each looking to blame the other.
“But yes their have been incredible stories of unbelievable bravery, the volunteer firefighters taking extensive time, weeks and even months off work to defend theirs and other people’s worlds, the community engagement and support, the generosity of strangers, the outpouring of support, the rawness and vulnerability of people of the land as they stand on their burnt out properties with nothing left but their resilience. I applaud the generosity of those who donate their time, resources and money.
“So I will not let depression and hopelessness be the answer, but am still waiting to find how I integrate on a personal level and how I can be in some way part of the solution and not just contributing to the problem.
“I know this is a Rite of Passage for so many. Our worlds and our lives have changed and we can’t go back to how it was before. It is how we integrate this that will determine our future. And another feeling that has been strong in me is that this is about the future for our children and our children’s children…….and what could be more important than that?
“And I admit my concern and fear is that when we have cleaned up and started to rebuild, when the rains have come and there is no longer choking smoke, that we will not have learnt the lessons and truly explored how this has come to be and what we need to do in order to truly move forwards sustainably as a national and global community.
“If we continue to deny climate change in favour of economic growth, if we accept the line that droughts and fires are a part of our national birthright, ignoring the fact that the water tables are being drained and temperatures are the hottest ever, if we continue to let our children seek their happiness in social media and believe fashion and money is more important than family………then this may well be just the beginning.
“So I don’t know what I will do from here, but I do know that this is as big and as important as anything that has happened in my lifetime and I am committed to finding what I can and should do if I am to be of service moving forwards.”
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“Climate change is not only racking up a bill for future generations to pay, it’s a price that people are paying for now with their health,” Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organisation, said.
Lifeline said there had been a significant spike in calls to its suicide prevention hotline on catastrophic fire days. On other days, its counsellors were also hearing people talk more about how the fires and the smoke affected their mental health, and the term “climate change anxiety” seems certain to enter the popular vernacular more than ever.
For many people, the fires will have a lifelong impact. Blue Mountain’s resident Kate Reid, 33, suffers anxiety and from ongoing nightmares related to the 2001 bushfires that struck on Christmas Day.
As someone who suffered anxiety, she said it “scared the heck out of me when our leaders don’t seem to be taking it seriously.”
This time of year is “never great” but this season was far beyond anything else. “It is a constant fear, that a fire could be behind my house at any time, there is no real reprieve,” Ms Reid wrote in the Herald.
Professor Hickie said city dwellers, usually two steps removed, were directly affected by the fires close to home and the “appalling weather quality”.
“It is the physical reality. Normally [Sydney residents] are seeing it on TV. Now they are seeing it themselves,” he said. “Ash is falling on their clothes, there are dust storms, smog similar to Beijing, fires are happening close to home, it is not matching reality.”
Professor Hickie called for bipartisan leadership in the same way that former Liberal prime minister John Howard acted on gun control after the 1996 massacre at Port Arthur and Labor prime minister Bob Hawke worked with business and unions in the 1980s to modernise the economy and address rising inflation.
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“I’d like to see the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition, and the Greens out there saying that they care about the impact and they’re interested in effective collection action.”
“It is a serious mental health issue. That’s what relieves people’s anxiety, that is that what gives confidence, that we recognise the size of the problem, and we recognise the scale of the response required.”
Professor Hickie said anxiety receded when a threat is predictable, and when they were confident that there was a rational and organised planned response.
But leaders of all political parties had been absent. “If ever there was a time not to be in the Canberra bubble but in the communities of Australia, this is it,” he said.
“Clearly we do not have a national consensus. What we have is division, we have arguments and we have screaming matches (in Parliament). The place is burning down. If we are not discussing it today, if not, when?”
A professor of psychiatry, Hickie was an NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow (2013-2017 and 2018-22), and inaugural Commissioner on Australia’s National Mental Health Commission (2012-18). He was CEO of Beyond Blue in 2002 and 2003.
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