Main description:

As the new UN IPCC climate report issued on August 9 states, humanity is in the midst of a civilization-changing event. The book will offer hope, inspiration, and a positive path forward to billions of people in North America, the EU, and worldwide who already are, or are certain in the near future, to experience severe mental health and psycho-social-spiritual problems due to being directly impacted by climate change-related disasters, emergencies, and toxic stresses. It will also offer hope, inspiration, and a positive path forward to the millions who are experiencing intersectional traumas, vicarious (or secondary) trauma, and eco-grief (or eco-anxiety) resulting from seeing climate impacts from afar or worrying about what the future holds for their children and them.

The book will challenge the thinking and approaches that dominate the mental health, disaster management, and human services fields today by describing why individually-focused clinical treatment, disaster mental health, and direct service programs--which are crisis and illness, not wellness and resilience focused--are woefully incapable of preventing or healing climate change-generated individual and collective traumas. It will also describe a proven empowering and hopeful alternative: a public health and prevention science approach to organizing community-based, culturally-tailored, population-level wellness and resilience building initiatives for relentless adversities in every community and region of North America and worldwide.

The book will offer a practical how-to guide that civic, community, and government leaders can use to organize, fund, facilitate, evaluate, and continually improve community-based mental wellness and resilience initiatives that prevent and heal individual and collective traumas and help people find meaning, purpose, and realistic hope even as the global climate emergency worsens.

Contents:

Introduction 1

Part I A Public Health Approach is Required to Build Population-Level Capacity for Mental Wellness and Transformational Resilience for the Long Climate Emergency

1 Climate Overshoot "101"

2 The Causes and Consequences of Individual, Community, and Societal Traumas

3 Elements of a Public Health Approach to Enhancing Mental Wellness and Transformational Resilience for the Long Climate Emergency

Part II Organizing and Operating Community-Based Initiatives that Build Universal Capacity for Mental Wellness and Transformational Resilience

4 Get Organized

5 Begin Building Community Capacity for Mental Wellness and Transformational Resilience

6 Establish RCC Goals, Objectives, Strategies, and Action Plans

Part III The Five Foundational Areas RCCs Must Emphasize to Enhance Universal Capacity for Mental Wellness and Transformational Resilience for the Long Climate Emergency

7 Build Social Connections across Boundaries in the Community

8 Ensure a Just Transition by Creating Healthy, Safe, Just, and Equitable Climate-Resilient Local Physical/Built, Economic, and Ecological Conditions

9 Cultivate Universal Literacy about Mental Wellness and Resilience

10 Foster Engagement in Specific Practices that Support Mental Wellness and Resilience

11 Establish Ongoing Opportunities for Residents to Heal Their Distresses and Traumas

12 Continually Track Progress, Learn, Improve, and Plan for the Long Term

Conclusion: The Need for a Global Movement to Enhance Universal Capacity for Mental Wellness and Transformational Resilience for the Civilization-Altering Climate Emergency