Adapting to Climate Change: Designing A Climate Change Responsive Mental Health Service Ecosystem
Tracks
Royal Poinciana
| Monday, July 14, 2025 |
| 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM |
Overview
Benjamin Norris, School Of Public Health, University of Queensland
Details
Key Presentation Learnings:
1. The mental health impacts of climate change impacts everyone and needs a whole of system response, not just from health.
2. All 'actors' or 'stakeholders' in a system have a part to play and can help each other by collaborating and sharing resources that benefit both themselves and each other.
3. Climate change has long term impacts on the mental health of communities and solutions to this problem need to consider the long term and complex nature of this problem.
Speaker
Mr Benjamin Norris
Phd Candidate Uq School Of Public Health
University Of Queensland
Adapting to Climate Change: Designing A Climate Change Responsive Mental Health Service Ecosystem.
Abstract
Adapting to Climate Change: Designing a Climate Change Responsive Mental Health Service Ecosystem is a workshop for anyone who has an interest in the mental health and wellbeing of communities that have been impacted by a climate risk event associated with climate change.
In this workshop, findings from a yet to be published scoping review examining 77 studies on mental health services and interventions that had been developed in response to a range of climate risk events such as hurricanes, cyclones, wildfires, floods and landslides, as well as drought and heatwaves will be presented.
Using a service ecosystem model, 21 unique service elements were identified within 9 practice domains. This workshop will look at designing a set of guidelines based on these 9 practice domains matched against the 4 stages of disaster recovery; Preparation, Planning, Response and Recovery.
Participants will be guided through a process, using the Haddon Matrix to identify key guidelines and considerations for effective mental health and wellbeing responses for each of these stages and then apply these guidelines to a simulated scenario.
The scenario will span across a period of time of an Australian community impacted by a range of climate risk events and participants will be asked to test the guidelines and see what needs to be refined in this process.
Participants will leave with a draft set of guidelines and considerations that they could then use to adapt to current and future climate risk events in their own communities.
In this workshop, findings from a yet to be published scoping review examining 77 studies on mental health services and interventions that had been developed in response to a range of climate risk events such as hurricanes, cyclones, wildfires, floods and landslides, as well as drought and heatwaves will be presented.
Using a service ecosystem model, 21 unique service elements were identified within 9 practice domains. This workshop will look at designing a set of guidelines based on these 9 practice domains matched against the 4 stages of disaster recovery; Preparation, Planning, Response and Recovery.
Participants will be guided through a process, using the Haddon Matrix to identify key guidelines and considerations for effective mental health and wellbeing responses for each of these stages and then apply these guidelines to a simulated scenario.
The scenario will span across a period of time of an Australian community impacted by a range of climate risk events and participants will be asked to test the guidelines and see what needs to be refined in this process.
Participants will leave with a draft set of guidelines and considerations that they could then use to adapt to current and future climate risk events in their own communities.
Biography
Ben Norris is the former Manager of the Mental Health Drought and Disaster Team in Queensland Health where he managed the mental health response to such disasters as STC Debbie, 2018 and 2019 Bushfires, 2019 NQ Monsoon trough as well as the 2020/21 Bushfires before retiring to commence a PhD on 'Mental Health Services to address climate change impacts on Australian communities' in 2023. This presentation and workshop will showcase the latest global research on mental health services and interventions in response to various climate risk events.
