Unburdened by false humility, postmodern trauma activists claim to have understood for the first time what drives all of human suffering
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CATEGORY: CONTROL OF LANGUAGE AND IDEAS  Resti Tito H. Villarino, RN (left), Suzanne Cosh, PhD (right) Source: Asian Journal of Psychiatry and BMC Psychiatry Read time: 2.3 minutes This Happened In the November 2024 issue of Asian Journal of Psychiatry, a literature review by Tito and colleagues reported on the impacts of natural disasters on Filipinos' mental health. In the November 2024 issue of BMC Psychiatry, a literature review by Cosh and colleagues examined the degree to which a new concept called eco-anxiety associated with mental health problems. Who Did This? Resti Tito H. Villarino is a Registered Nurse and currently works as a Clinical Instructor at the College of Nursing at West Visayas State University, Philippines. He has published several articles on well-being in college students. This is his only first-author paper on psychiatric disorders. Suzanne Cosh is a clinical psychologist and Associate Professor at the University of New England, Australia. She has approximately 30 first-author and over 40 secondary-author peer reviewed publications. Her most frequent first-author research topic is elite athletes, and none have been on trauma or severe stress. The Claim Tito and colleagues reviewed 32 studies. They searched for studies that assessed psychiatric problems related to events that could be attributed to man-made greenhouse gas emissions, including hurricanes, drought, and heatwaves. They concluded, as had all previous literature reviews on natural disasters, that these are associated with elevated PTSD, anxiety, and depression. Their message, however, was that the world ought to have heightened urgency because disasters are increasing in frequency due to man-made impacts. Cosh et al. reviewed 35 studies. They found that individuals who worry more about climate—the newfangled concept of eco-anxiety—show more symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress in a causal relationship. Their interpretation is that eco-anxiety is probably a normal response of rational humans to a true crisis, but it can become excessive. Analysis Tito and colleagues manipulated what should have been a run-of-the-mill literature review into a form of activism by attributing psychiatric suffering to allegedly oppressive human activities. They did not review any evidence about the frequency of disasters. They simply asserted that disasters are increasing in frequency as scientific consensus.
When counting the number of tornadoes of all strengths, there is no trend over the past sixty years; and when counting only the strongest tornadoes (EF3 and higher), “their number decreased by about 40 percent during the sixty years following 1954.” The situations are similar for snowfalls, precipitation, floods, drought, and wildfires. Eco-anxiety is not a validated disorder-level problem. Cosh and colleagues’ form of activism was to blindly accept the premise of eco-anxiety as a valid problem. They lightly touched on the debate of whether this newly-invented concept is a normal reaction of all normal people that can become excessive, or is one of many manifestations of other problems such as generalized anxiety disorder. A third option, which they, and leftist academia, typically ignore, is that eco-anxiety is a function of excessive neuroticism, one of the big five personality traits that has been shown to be more common in liberals [2,3]. Unfortunately, they did not collect the type of data that could have untangled this question. Cosh neglected to mention that there have been no interview-based assessments or other attempts to distinguish climate worries from these other problems. Climate anxiety, so far, has always been assessed with self-report, which is highly prone to false positives and misunderstandings. Why Is This Happening? The demand for crisis has outstripped the supply. The strategy of the liberal hegemony in academia and media has been to fabricate crises and claim they are existential threats to humanity. This has been most apparent in politics, but it is also common in psychology. Climate change is no different. As one group of researchers claimed what has been a common refrain, “The climate emergency will likely prove this century's greatest threat to public health” and we are facing “a potential mental health crisis” [4]. Based on evidence, this claim is absurd for multiple reasons. With just a bit more equipoise, they could have made the true, and more responsible claim, that climate is complex, man-made emissions are not a crisis, but the minds of many humans are vulnerable to believe fictions simply because they are seamless with their inner worlds [5]. REFERENCES [1] Koonin SE (2024). Unsettled? What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters (Updated and expanded edition). BenBella Books: Dallas, TX. [2] McCann SJH (2018). State Resident Neuroticism Accounts for Life Satisfaction Differences Between Conservative and Liberal States of the USA. Psychological Reports 121:2, 204-228. [3] Widiger TA, Oltmanns JR (2017). Neuroticism is a fundamental domain of personality with enormous public health implications. World Psychiatry Jun;16(2):144-145. [4] Patrick R, Snell T, Gunasiri H, Garad R, Meadows G, Enticott J (2023). Prevalence and determinants of mental health related to climate change in Australia. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 57(5):710-724. [5] Scheeringa MS (2022). The Trouble With Trauma: The Search to Discover How Beliefs Become Facts. Las Vegas: Central Recovery Press. ISBN 978-1949481563 Comments are closed.
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