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Heat warnings are issued for the physical dangers of hot Utah summer days, but not for the impact it can have on a person’s mental health.
When temperatures are above 98 degrees for multiple days in a row, Steve Sugden, professor of psychiatry at the University of Utah, said research shows it can have a devastating effect.
“They [people] had increased rates of suicide ideations, they had worsening mood symptoms, they had worsening psychotic symptoms, they had worsening manic symptoms, they had worsening substance use,” he said.
Excessive heat can exacerbate existing mental health symptoms and lead to more hospital visits, Sugden added. As Utah continues to experience hotter summers, Sugden expects heat-related mental health problems to rise as well.
Despite the prevalence, a new study found mental health issues associated with heat are rarely included in public awareness campaigns and heat-action plans. The study, published in Current Environmental Health Reports, analyzed 83 plans from 24 countries, including the U.S. Of those plans, 75.9% mentioned mental health, but “only 31.3% acknowledged its specific impacts and 21.7% included targeted interventions.”
“I think part of the gap is that people don't realize that extreme heat events can impact their mental health,” said Allison Stewart-Ruano, lead author of the paper and environmental health sciences doctoral student at Columbia University.
Heat waves, she said, can also trigger new mental health conditions. That’s not surprising to Sugden because heat can act as an increased stressor, and that “is when you tend to have a lot more of these first break episodes.” Part of that increase is because it’s hard for the body to acclimate and cool itself down. Additionally, heat is connected to a loss of sleep, which is especially true for individuals who don’t have easy access to cooling measures, like those experiencing homelessness or with a low socioeconomic status.
As extreme heat events become more common, Stewart-Ruano thinks mental health issues will become more visible. But the lack of heat-action plans that address mental health is something both Sugden and Stewart-Ruano believe needs to change.
“It's really up to local governments or regional governments to implement these plans at a more local level since there's no national standardized response,” Stewart-Ruano said.
A spokesperson with the Utah Department of Health and Human Services said the state doesn’t have a heat-action plan. If there are any, they are left to the municipalities and counties to create. And the state doesn’t keep track of the cities that do.
Stewart-Ruano acknowledges it can be beneficial to have these action plans implemented on the local level because leaders have a better understanding of the different needs of their community. Even then, there don’t seem to be a lot of plans in place at the local level across Utah, and if there are, the mitigations are pretty limited.
Salt Lake County opens cooling centers at different county buildings for people to escape the heat. The downside is that the centers have restricted hours and many aren’t open on the weekends. Some of the hottest places in the state, like Washington County, don't have any public cooling centers. While extreme heat is expected to hit rural Utah harder, Moab is the only town with a cooling center.
There are various state agencies, like the Utah Department of Public Safety, that launch heat awareness campaigns. Still, those campaigns don’t mention mental health and are centered around the physical manifestation of heat, such as dehydration, heat stroke and exhaustion. Additionally, to the department’s knowledge, the governor has never declared a state of emergency over extreme heat.
“Unfortunately, we don't consider heat as a disaster,” Sugden said. “I think if we were to classify the impacts of heat as a disaster, I think then it would get more on people's radars to where we would have more of these mitigation strategies.”
Some of the strategies, Stewart-Ruano said, could include checking on vulnerable neighbors, incorporating mental health counseling at urban centers, like cooling zones, building more green space and creating broader educational awareness campaigns about mental health and the dangers of substance use during heat waves. She said it would be helpful to standardize some of the guidelines to help countries, states and localities build a heat-action plan.
Sugden said homeless shelters can also play a role.
“They [are] almost needed as much during the summer months as they do the winter months.”
