Heat and the threat of wildfires are raising anxiety and worry, particularly for people in rural B.C.
According to the B.C. Crisis Line Network, the number of calls to the B.C.-wide mental health support line (310-6789) and the 1-800-SUICIDE line, have jumped by as much as 25 per cent.
“Calls to the mental health crisis line and suicide intervention line increase during heat waves,” Asha Croggon, with the network, said in a news release. “We saw an increase last year during the heat dome and the devastating wildfires, and we are seeing it happen again this year.”
The amount of the increase varies by region, she added. And rural and remote communities, “are especially impacted by the recurring threats from heat waves and wildfires as they try to cope with the trauma caused by last year’s wildfire that ravaged the Village of Lytton and other areas of B.C.”
During extreme weather, people reach out to crisis lines because such events can be tipping points in mental health, she added.
The number of calls have also increased in the more metropolitan region of Fraser Health, but Thaddée Bergler, program manager with the Fraser Health Crisis Line, said it’s difficult with the stats from the Fraser region to correlate the increasing number of calls with specific disasters such as fires or floods.
In 2021, the number of calls to the Fraser Health line grew from about 9,000 in June to 11,000 in November.
Such events, like the extensive flooding in the Fraser Valley, are critical factors, but not the only factors leading to the increase in calls, he said.
“But I don’t think it’s possible to isolate it to the different events happening within the community at the time,” he said.
The Fraser Health region saw the number of calls last year steadily increasing month after month from June to November.
Normally, there’s not such a clean correlation between an event and the number of calls received because there so many factors, such as an increase in overall mental distress and because demand for services has risen steadily since COVID-19.
In the fiscal year of 2020 to 2021, the Fraser Health line received about 90,000 calls. That jumped to 117,000 calls the next year.
“It’s the delayed effect of this trauma … for everyone … People are hitting a point where they’re really not feeling OK,” added Bergler.
He hasn’t studied the statistics about calls related to climate anxiety although he knows they do get those calls.
Financial pressures, such as rising costs for gasoline, food and housing are also affecting people.
“It just feels like there’s so much coming at everyone at the same time. It’s really hard to slow down and say this was caused by this,” he said.
The increase actually started with COVID-19.
“I think we’re all kind of going through this together,” he said.
His general advice is for people to focus on what they can control and to try not to get caught up in large events.
The stress of such events also affects the full-time and volunteers at the B.C. Crisis Line Network.
One of the reasons for not being able to connect an event directly to the number of calls is the inability for the line to know from what area the calls are.
“That’s just the nature of the service,” he concluded.
