Wednesday, July 09, 2008
It is being called the climate change delusion as noted by Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry. The previously unreported phenomenon has finally found its first victim, a 17 year old Australian man. After eight months of depression and visions of apocalyptic events, the young man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital. In addition, "the patient had also developed the belief that, due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead within days to the deaths of millions of people through exhaustion of water supplies." (source) His belief was strong enough to convince the man to quit drinking water, our lifeblood.
Could this just be another paranoid delusion characteristic of some other mental illness or a purposeful introduction of a new mental health disorder as a political stunt to instil yet more fear of global warming into the nation?
A more frightening thought is the idea that many politicians in positions of great power are likely suffering from this so-called climate change delusion.
And, at what point are those who insist on walking, biking, or taking a city bus to work considered to be at risk of developing this new mental illness?
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