Extreme heat damages mental health, especially that of women

“Hot flashes during a heat wave mean menopause for everyone! »

That’s author Sandrine Fillasier’s amusing observation. Maybe you know about menopause, maybe you don’t. But the heat wave, no doubt.

If we are repeatedly told to drink water, to avoid physical exertion, to close the blinds during the day almost every summer when the weather gets too stifling, we always forget to address the effects of heat on our mental health, detailed in an article by HuffPost.

According to an American scientific study reported by The Guardian in February 2022, when temperatures would be high the number of psychiatric emergency visits would increase by 8%.

The heat weakens our mental health

Stress, mood disorders or disorders related to substance use, anxiety, self-mutilation, schizophrenia… There are many pathologies. Surely the heat would aggravate the psychiatric disorders of those who already suffer from them, but according to the American researchers of the aforementioned study, the population as a whole is more anxious and depressed during the warm season.

During the two-year health crisis, the mental health of the French has already been weakened. According to Public Health France, 34% of French people, in February 2021, presented an anxious or depressive state. And the high temperatures add a layer of it, amplifying everyone’s psychic fragility.

Certain, these heatwaves have a greater impact on already vulnerable people. As public health institutions remind us every year, the elderly and isolated are at the forefront of high temperatures. But there are also people in psychological care who can sometimes find it difficult to tolerate the high heat. Tachycardia attacks can occur, for example, when the patient takes antidepressants or neuroleptics, a drug cocktail that is difficult to tolerate in the presence of high temperatures.

A 1°C rise would increase the number of acts of violence by 4%

And that wouldn’t be all… High heat would increase our aggression. This was revealed in 2013 by a study conducted by the US University of Berkeleya mere 1 degree increase from the seasonal norm would increase the number of acts of violence by 4%such as domestic violence, murder or rape.

During periods of intense heat, this state of aggression and impulsivity can be explained by physiological causesas confirmed by Élodie Gratreau, PhD student in the history and philosophy of psychiatric treatment techniques at the Gostech laboratory, with the huffpost :

“Physiologically, when it’s hot, our heart rate increases, our pulse is stronger, our blood pressure rises, and our level of cortisol (the stress hormone) rises therefore we will tend to feel more irritable, but the reactions vary from individual to individual and there is still a lack of in-depth studies on the subject. »

Another factor that reinforces this feeling of irritability: lack of oxygen. To compensate for this deficiency in some areas of our brain, our body defends itself by sending more blood than usual to the rest of the body to cool it down. And it can make us act more impulsively under the influence of emotions. In short, the expression “having a blood stroke” takes on all its meaning!

Eco-anxiety, the evil of our time

From a social point of view, the heat widens the inequalities between citizens: there are those who have air conditioning, those who live too cramped in houses transformed into furnaces… And an ecological awareness is developing among many of us.

In recent years, Millennials and Generation Z are increasingly mobilizing for our planet… And they develop a specific evil of our time: eco-anxiety. This phenomenon is still recent, and little scientifically defined, but would concern people, most often between the ages of 18 and 24, who develop a “chronic fear of a doomed environment”, according to the American Psychological Association. In other words, it would be the feeling of helplessness experienced in the face of the consequences of global warming that would lead to anxiety.

Faced with multiple alarming reports from the IPCC on the state of our globe, faced with political inaction in the fight against global warming, the heat wave is increasingly seen as a climate disaster. Our earth is dying and we should be afraid and take action instead of making it a habit.

Pregnancy, menstruation, street harassment… Women’s fears during the hot season

And the scorching temperatures don’t particularly spare menstruating people and their mental health. For those of us who are pregnant, summer temperatures can be a real nightmare. Unsurprisingly, heatwaves and pregnancy don’t mix. Doctors recommend that you hydrate very regularly, rest and above all protect yourself from the sun if you try to go out… But many of them are forced to isolate themselves socially to withstand the heat.

And there is also the story of the rules… Can they become more frightening, more depressing, when it’s very hot? For Tosin Sotubo, general practitioner and administrator of the Mind Body Doctor site, in the columns of Refinery29, everything would once again be a matter of hormones:

” While heat by itself does not make menstruation worse, associated symptoms may worsen in very hot weather because you are more tired, for example. From there, a whole chain reaction begins: you are more stressed, therefore your hormones are disturbed.

However, during your period, your hormones are already in shock. The body attempts to regulate the level of estrogen relative to the level of progesterone. But when the stress hormone kicks in, estrogen takes over. It is this imbalance that makes symptoms worse, as well as the dehydration and fever that usually accompany menstruation. »

Finally, the question of street harassment remains: when the heat returns, women are more and more likely to be harassed, assaulted on the street because of their clothing. Some even prefer to stay at home rather than face the road, its idiots and predators. Of course, there is still no data on the subject.

Because yes, The heat wave aggravates our mental weaknesses but also gender inequalities and kills women on a large scale. As journalist Lucile Torregrossa reminds us in the second episode of the fourth season of the Injustices podcast, produced by Louie Media and dedicated to the 2003 heat wave in France: among the victims over the age of 75, 64.7% were women… No, the latter are not physiologically more fragile in the face of heat stroke than men. However, their living conditions are more precarious than those of men over 65. And this is all.

Featured image: © Andrea Piacquadio – Pexels

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