User:Laurenzoey23/final article

These are my recommendations for revising the article: Solastalgia.


 * I added a few citations in the section
 * I added more research, especially how it can be classified as a mental illness

Copied content from Solastalgia; see that pages history for attribution.

In different contexts
A paper published by Albrecht et al. in 2005 focused on two contexts: the experiences of persistent drought in rural New South Wales and the impact of large-scale open-cut coal mining on individuals in the Upper Hunter Valley of NSW. In both cases, people exposed to environmental change had negative reactions brought about by a sense of powerlessness over the unfolding environmental changes. A community's loss of certainty in a once predictable environment is common among groups that express solastalgia. In Askland's article, he explains that the distress is caused by a lack of interaction between the society in social and political ways, that in turn affect the experience of a community. Societies whose livelihoods are not closely tied to their environment are not as likely to express solastalgia and, in turn, societies that are closely tied to their environments are more susceptible. Groups that depend heavily upon agroecosystems are considered particularly vulnerable. There are many examples of this across Africa, where agrarian communities have lost vital resources due to environmental changes. This has resulted in an increase in the number of environmental refugees throughout Africa in recent years. Solastalgia tends to affect wealthier populations less. A study conducted in the western United States showed that higher-income families experienced the effects of solastalgia significantly less than their lower-income neighbors following a destructive wildfire. This is due to the flexibility wealth can provide. In this case, wealthy families were able to move from or rebuild their homes, reducing the uncertainty caused by the wildfire. Other studies have supported the existence of solastalgia in Appalachian communities affected by mountain-top removal coal mining practices. Communities located in close proximity to coal mining sites experienced significantly higher depression rates than those located farther from the sites.

A study review over solastalgia shows 15 years of scholarly literature on the understanding between climate change, how it is measured in literature, and how it affects people's mental health. .

One of those studies used the Environmental Distress Scale (EDS) to evaluate Solastalgia in the Upper Hunter Valley. The conclusion of this study proved Solastalgia to be high on the distress scale. '''For this study, those living in the Upper Hunter Valley were test subjects for this new idea of Solastalgia. They were asked questions relating to the impact of industrialization on their once rural town. Responses to these questions showed that these people were deeply affected emotionally, posing another question for scientist, "Is this a mental disorder?" There is reasonable evidence that links solastalgia and post traumatic stress disorder.  Post-traumatic stress disorder relates to the distress a person experiences after a traumatic event. While, nothing has been decided whether Solastalgia can be considered a mental illness or not, it does meet requirements as characterized by Robins and Guze. Although nothing has been said yet, there are debates to include it into the American Psychiatric Association's Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as a new mental illness.'''

