According to a recent study report, there is an interconnection between hotter temperatures and mental health, if there is a condition of increasing temperature increase the number of hospital visits for mental health reasons and in suicide rates. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in the United States and globally.
In the latest study reports, the authors concluded that cooler temperatures decrease the level of adverse mental health outcomes and that warmer temperatures increase negative health outcomes. They provide further detail: “Our main estimates imply that increasing average monthly temperature by 1°F leads to a 0.48% increase in mental health [emergency department] visits and a 0.35% increase in suicides.”They also show that their estimates remain stable over time — in other words, people do not seem to adapt to changes in temperature very quickly. The authors explain that they found “no evidence of effective adaptation to the identified effects anywhere or among any group.
For many years, scientists have studied how climate affects the mental well-being of people. However, it is often difficult to link temperature directly to health outcomes. As an example, a 2017 study that focused on India found that suicide rates there peak in tandem with increasing temperatures.
However, the author explained the reason behind that, is the suicide rate only increases when the temperature spike occurs during the growing season. At this time, the higher temperature reduces crop yield and produces economic hardship, which, the author believes, might increase the risk of self-harm. So, in this case, temperature increases do not directly influence suicide rates.
