The Wicked Problem of Mental Health and an Equitable Zero-Waste Circular Economy

Students should learn that the causes and treatment of mental disorders are wicked problems that benefit from systems thinking as well as that climate change and mental health are connected. Additionally, students should gain familiarity with reading, understanding, and summarizing research that connects mental health and climate change. The course-specific module does not involve quantitative reasoning in the context of using data from environmental disciplines; however, it does involve using quantitative reasoning to understand the results of the research articles the students read as well as how the waste audit results affected their mental health. Critical thinking is the primary higher-order thinking skill used. Students also gain experience with writing and oral presentation.

This activity is a follow-on to the Wicked Problem of an Equitable​ Zero-Waste Circular Economy​ module.

This was designed for upper level psychology students with an interest in the mental health field. The common module with integrated course-specific material took ~3-4 hours to complete and could be used with any level of college student. The separate course-specific activity (reading, discussing, and presenting on an article related to mental health and climate change) took place during one lab session that lasted ~3 hours. Ideally, students would have some prior exposure to reading psychological research articles. The research chapter is covered early in the course to help ensure that students have the background to begin finding relevant research for and planning their final projects, which involve them implementing and assessing some type of mental health intervention or prevention that is appropriate for undergraduates to do (e.g., showing videos of meditation or deep breaking exercises to other students).

Day 1 of Class, Monday (50 minutes)

1. Hand out clean masks left over from the COVID-19 pandemic and have students write on the back how the pandemic has impacted their or others' mental health/well-being; can be positive or negative effects.
2. Have them share out their name and what they wrote on their mask. (I also had them share something fun/interesting about their summer.)
3. Pre-Test for course (~20 minutes)
4. Syllabus introduction

First Lab Session of Year, Monday or Wednesday (3 hours)

Note: Students completed waste audit as homework prior to lab.

1. BASICS Consent and Pre-Survey
2. Work way through BASICS PowerPoint and activities (see included files), including:
   a. refer back to mask activity (which involved recycling) from first class and how pandemic influenced their mental health--discuss other things that impact mental health, noting connections among impacts when possible;
   b. use a. to introduce idea of wicked problems and how they require transdisciplinary and systems thinking;
   c. worksheet connecting UN SDGs to mental illness and/or its treatment (see included file);
   d. review and discussion of waste audit data; 
   e. cover material on linear versus circular economies as well as different types of equity; 
   f. condensed/altered gallery tour involving completion of chart documenting equity implications of linear versus circular economies (see included file); done by watching and discussing videos linked in PowerPoint (I added some for my class)—time spent specifically on mental health (in)equity; 
   g. briefly introduced how mental health profession could be more circular (main way = via telemental health);
   h. ended by noting the world needs more 'wicked mental health professionals' (based on the article "The World Needs More Wicked Scientists" cited on last slide of PowerPoint) and, really, more 'wicked' citizens.
   i. Had hoped to end with having them look for research articles to read for our research chapter lab on climate change and mental health, but we ran out of time (I was able to do this the first year I taught the BASICS curriculum). So, the second year, I found some options and they voted to narrow those down to two.

Day 3 of Class (Friday)

BASICS Group Work on Final Essay (~40 minutes—also discussed class papers/projects). Final essay was altered so that students had to address mental health equity/inequity as part of the health equity section.

Final essays were due the following week by Wednesday at the start of class (Monday was Labor Day); Post-survey was conducted in class that day.

Second Lab Session of Year, Monday or Wednesday (3 hours)

1. 1. Students read one of the two possible articles involving climate change and mental health prior to lab. They had discussion questions they had to answer about the article they read (see included file). 
2. Students divided into groups based on the article they read and reviewed/discussed the answers to the discussion questions. I circulated between the groups and helped guide the discussion, making sure they understood the data analyses. 
3. Students in each group created a PowerPoint to share the main points of each study with their classmates who read the other article. They also had to include discussion questions for the class as part of the presentation. 
4. Each year one of the articles involved qualitative research methods; so, we also discussed the pros and cons of qualitative versus quantitative research methods. 
5. Lab ended with the students starting to think about their final projects for the course. My hope each year was that some of the students would do a final project that related somehow to sustainability, climate change etc. The first year, one group was interested in the effects of green space/nature on mental health and did a project where they added some plants to the college dining room at the end of the semester and then approached students who were or were not sitting by the plants to answer a brief questionnaire about their current mood and stress levels. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, few students chose to sit by the plants and the students did not find any effect of sitting by them, largely due to a small sample size.

Integrated Common Exercise and Course-Specific Module PowerPoint (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 18MB Apr18 23) 
Course specific edits to waste audit and final essay (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 14kB Apr18 23) 
Student Worksheet for Linking Mental Health and SDGs (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 162kB Apr18 23) 
Equity Implications of Linear versus Circular Economies Chart (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 14kB Apr18 23) 
Questions for Course-Specific Exercise (Microsoft Word 24kB Apr18 23)

The following two articles were helpful in connecting the common module material on wicked problems and systems thinking to mental health.

Hannigan B., & Coffey M. (2011). Where the wicked problems are: The case of mental health. Health Policy, 101(3), 220-227. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2010.11.002

Berry, H.L., Waite, T.D., Dear, K.B.G., Capon, A. G., & Murray, V. (2108). The case for systems thinking about climate change and mental health. Nature Climate Change 8, 282–290. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0102-4

Below are the two articles students read for the course-specific exercise the first year I taught the curriculum.

Clayton, S., & Karazsia, B. T. (2020). Development and validation of a measure of climate change anxiety. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 69, 101434.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101434.

Middleton, J., Cunsolo, A., Jones-Bitton, A., Shiwak, I., Wood, M., Pollock, N., Flowers, C., & Harper, S. L. (2020). "We're people of the snow:" Weather, climate change, and Inuit mental wellness. Social Science & Medicine, 262, 113137.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113137.

Below are the two articles students read for the course-specific exercise the second year I taught the curriculum.

Budziszewska M., & Jonsson, S.E. (2022). Talking about climate change and eco-anxiety in psychotherapy: A qualitative analysis of patients' experiences. Psychotherapy, 59(4), 606-615. https://doi.org/10.1037/pst0000449

Ojala M. (2020). Coping with climate change among adolescents: Implications for subjective well-being and environmental engagement. Sustainability, 5(5), 2191-2209. https://doi.org/10.3390/su5052191