The Nueva School's Innovative Learning Conference

Environmental stress driven by weather extremes and related natural disasters is becoming an inescapable part of our lives, and will only be exacerbated by continuing climate change. While the impacts of environmental change, such as increasing heat waves and wild fires, on physical health have been studied in some detail, there is minimal understanding of the impact of environmental stress on mental health. This is especially critical in California, with the increasingly frequent wildfires driven by a changing climate in recent years. In this talk, I will introduce our recent collaborations with climate scientists, epidemiologists, and community psychologists to parse the impact of climate change on mental health and explore how neuroscience can contribute to this understanding.