In California, this year’s fire season is outpacing last year’s record-breaking season. And throughout the Western states, fire season is starting earlier and ending later, says the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
As the devastating damage wildfire can inflict on communities, researchers have been trying to understand the effects of fire and smoke on mental health, according to a recent report from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Author May M. T. Kyaw said in a press release, “Wildfires are occurring with increasing frequency and severity each year, and each year their impacts on people become clearer.”
“They displace entire communities, and their smoke can affect regions hundreds of miles away, and for days, weeks, or months at a time,” Kyaw added. “However, very little is understood about how wildfires affect mental health.”
The report suggests that wildfires can cause mental health issues, ranging from “generalized distress to serious health and problems including physical and mental illness and drug abuse.”
It says, “After a wildfire, residents who return home to a devastated landscape face, in addition to the financial, health and social stresses of rebuilding homes and community, face an ever-present reminder through sight of their trauma.”
The authors noted that climate change is responsible for increased “frequency, duration and severity of wildfires,” as fire seasons are lasting longer and smoke is extending miles beyond a fire’s reach.
“Understanding the mental health effects of wildfire smoke is crucial as the world enters a time in which wildfire smoke events are prolonged events,” the report adds.
The report also highlighted a study on children and teenagers who were exposed to smoke, suggesting that proximity and the perceived threat of fire were factors that affect stress and emotional well-being, according to U.S. News.
A separate study has found that persistent smoke had a negative impact on mental and emotional health following fires in the Canadian Northwest Territories, with community members reporting feelings of fear, stress, isolation, and uncertainty.
Most people reported a “direct connection between the wildfires and smoke and a decrease in their mental and emotional health,” because they were confined to their homes.
Lead author of the report David Eisenman said, “Living under the lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic gives some sense of what this is like.”
“The isolation from community and the dread that leaving the house to go into the world outside is fundamentally dangerous,” he added, “this might sum up the isolating and fearsome experience of the pandemic and persistent wildfire smoke events.” The article was published in U.S. News.
