Jyoti Mishra: mindfulness, climate, and social connection

Dr. Jyoti Mishra is an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, and in this episode she describes how we may reshape society to cope with the climate crisis.

We learned about Dr. Mishra's work first from an article she co-authored in Nature, "A mental health focus to amplify climate resilience actions" (for which her co-authors are Hahrie Han and Veerabhadran Ramanathan).

In our interview, Dr. Mishra describes how society is integral in climate transformations, and is influenced by everyone's individual, unique lived experiences. Climate education and action are deeply intertwined. Collective efficacy in solutions builds as we begin with baby steps and work up through awareness, to learning about solutions, and then to taking action. Dr. Mishra has also focused on transforming the medical system, and has hosted a climate change and mental health seminar for healthcare workers. 

This interview is conducted by Helena Rambler, Hunter College High School Class of 2026, and edited by Catherine Du, Hunter College High School Class of 2029. 

Transcript

Dr. Jyoti Mishra

There's a lot of partisanship in our country with regards to belief in climate change as a phenomena, but when we talk to people about their experiences with disasters, that emotional experience is very similar across people with different political opinions, and That's what can bring us together.

Helena Rambler 

Welcome back to another episode of Bridging the Carbon Gap. My name is Helena Rambler, and I am a senior at Hunter College High School. I will be speaking to Dr Jyoti Mishra, an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at University of California San Diego. She focuses on mental health and neuroscience, and more specifically, looks at the intersection between these fields and climate change. 

Helena Rambler

Just to start off, could you give us, like a brief, I would say, summary of you as yourself and what you do? 

Dr. Jyoti Mishra  

Sure. I'm Dr Jyoti Mishra. I'm currently an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego. I do mental health and neuroscience research, and as one of the focuses in that research, I also look at the intersection of climate change and mental health. 

Helena Rambler

Great. Thank you. So I think that, like your perspective, is relatively unique, and I think it's a really interesting way to look at the climate crisis and just like the intersection with humans and mental health. So how did you get involved in this field?

Dr. Jyoti Mishra 

As a researcher, I had been studying how our environment influences our brains and our mental health, and I was looking at initially immediate family environments, and then going beyond that. It comes to the environments beyond the family or our neighborhoods and what's generally happening in our communities. And around the 2015, to 2020, timeframe, we were witnessing an increase in climate related extremes happening in our communities. And I started working in that realm, because of my interest in how it might affect our brain and mental health, and also because, serendipitously, when I was thinking about it, my son, who was in first grade at the time, brought home a fundraising flyer For a very severe wildfire that happened in California, the camp fire. And when I reached out to the people who were raising funds for the fire, they really talked a lot about the mental health strife in the community. 

They were talking about how basic needs were being met, and a lot of aid was coming in for the basic necessities that people needed, but there was really a crisis in terms of looking at mental health in that context. And so I decided to partner with the community stakeholders to really characterize the issue better and amplify the effects and in our current conversations, 

Helena Rambler  03:00

Why do you think that the relation between climate change and mental health is overlooked most of the time?

Dr. Jyoti Mishra  03:08

I think that there has been a lot of great emphasis at the intersection of climate and health. So general health is we can see how air pollution might impact our lungs, or heat might cause us to perspire, and so the body how it responds, it's very evident, and those impacts have been looked at for some time. I think mental health is no longer ignored, but it's in the last decade there has been a really a great push in terms of including mental health in the conversation. 

But I think in general, these relationships between climate change and mental health have been an afterthought, because, in general, mental health, our policies and our healthcare infrastructure doesn't focus on so much. So like the World Health Organization has stated that only 2% of government budgets around the world are dedicated to mental health. So mental health in itself, is a neglected area. So that intersection with climate change and mental health has naturally been a newer focus.

Helena Rambler  04:24

Great. Thank you. Just some terms you use in your writing, like climate trauma and climate resilience. How would you define these terms and what way like? What are some ways that we see them in our lives today? 

Dr. Jyoti Mishra  04:38

So we came to use climate trauma, it was coined in the literature around the same time as we started doing our studies, because we found that the effects of climate related extreme events like wildfire, events like floods or heat, can have prolonged impact on mental health and lead to combination of symptoms related to post traumatic stress and or depression and anxiety, and so that's how the word climate trauma started to get used. And climate resilience, in that context, can be a term that's used to describe Mental Health Resilience, which would be psychosocial resilience, and how a person can cope with stressors, but also climate resilience has been used very broadly to include actions that are during mitigation efforts. 

So how do we reduce future risks from climate change? How do we prepare ourselves to face the current risks, and in some ways, also transformation in that, how do we socially get more people together to be aware of climate related impacts and bring greater awareness and be proponents for climate action? Broadly, climate resilience can include all of these foci, mitigation, adaptation, and what's called societal transformation. 

Helena Rambler

On that note, for societal transformations, do you believe that there is a specific kind of transformation that is the most urgent? 

Dr. Jyoti Mishra

I think that transformation really builds from individual lived experiences. There's a lot of partisanship in our country with regards to belief in climate change as a phenomena, but when we talk to people about their experiences with disasters, that emotional experience is very similar across people with different political opinions, and That's what can bring us together, and that's what we're referring to as the core of societal transformation. 

Helena Rambler  06:46

In terms of climate education, just one of the chief inspirations for this podcast. How do you think that climate education helps, and why do you think that there is a lack of education across the world? 

Dr. Jyoti Mishra  06:57

I think science needs to be translated to education, and we're lagging behind in that really intentions around the world, such as the UN says that should be greenified, that it's not that climate education should be its own separate class, but that all kinds of education, if you could be doing it outdoors with plants and leave there's various ways in which regular education can also include climate awareness, and that today there's a great need for climate education to include, not just learning about changes in climate that are scientifically validated. 

But also, how can we deal with these changing weather extremes? It's coming up, especially in communities that are conscious of sustainability efforts. It's up to the people to figure out how we can really spread it more widely. It's hard to change the status quo. So all of us together, we need to create action and opportunities for such education to be more widely available. 

Helena Rambler  08:13

Your second point was greater social connection. Do you think that this connection is something that can be planned? How do you think people can go about developing these?

Dr. Jyoti Mishra  08:26

I think they're definitely planning. For example, when we talk about climate resilience, part of it is figuring out how communities will respond to and prepare for future changes in climate. That kind of planning can happen by reaching out to leaders across communities, especially communities that have done well in the context of a climate related event. 

How can other communities learn from better examples, or even communities coming together to figure out what are the salient needs that can be shared as wisdom from different community stakeholders and building toward resilience action plans together. It's only when communities are non-siloed that we will understand that we actually do relate to each other and that we can reach out to each other in times of need. 

Helena Rambler  09:17

Jump to your fourth one actually about policy making, I think that there's this kind of understanding that people in power have almost a responsibility to make the best decisions for their communities, and a lot of those decisions we would like them to be time oriented. But why do you think these people in power may because, from their perspective, some decisions, even though it may be better for the climate, may diminish their own power or may not completely align with their best interests. So how do you think that they should approach these situations, or how should they balance what's best for everyone versus themselves? In like a more psychological perspective. 

Dr. Jyoti Mishra  10:07

I think everyone's mostly frustrated with the political state right now. We don't have the right set of checks and balances, and whenever a particular arm of our government is making decisions without having any checks in place, then obviously they are making decisions from a very selfish point of view, having checks and balances that also bring in people is very important. The silver lining is that in the last year or two, we've seen more of our general population come into town halls and ask about the actions that are being taken and how they are affecting the people us being proactive in showing up to ask our political leaders about How they're making action and that we vote for them for society's benefit. And to make that very clear, being involved in the process is very important, and the injustices that are happening are mostly being fought in the courts. 

The involvement of people in the movement is super important. In the article, I also mentioned, in some countries, there are chief futures officers, and their main goal is to figure out whether certain policies are aligned with the long term goals for infrastructure or general development that is multiple generations out, as opposed to just for the current generation. When we think about, say, drilling and taking away our natural resources, we know that that would provide us with more non renewable energy sources right now, but it would take that resource away from our future generations. So do we have people who are appointed who are looking out for these goals? Currently, there aren't any, but there are countries that have appointed people like futures officers to look out for such goals. Really, we need governments that have more checks and balances in place and more participation of the public in the political process. All of these actions together are what are required in an active and democratic process to have change that is beneficial for the long term. 

Helena Rambler  12:35

And then trying to your third point, where you talk about coalition building and how talking about community, we talked about policy making, or lawmakers, and I think that there's so many different groups that we all need to like work together, specifically about the field of medicine, I would say, from looking from a climate perspective, there's a lot of overlooking the effect that medicine has on climate, like, I'm thinking of just even small example with just like how much single use materials that is used in medicine. What do you think the balance between how doctors think of the Climate Committee, I know doing their jobs 

Dr. Jyoti Mishra  13:16

The medical system is a burden system in that doctors are just trying to see as many cases as they can in the time that they've been allotted, and sometimes they don't have the time to think about climate related issues unless they are aware of how changes in climate and weather In the community have been affecting the population that they serve. 

The American Medical Education hosts seminars. I have given a climate change and mental health seminar as part of that, and they've also included a climate and health seminar. So these are education courses that are taken by all doctors who are interested. 

And they can get medical education credit for it to really understand how these intersections can play out in their day to day practice, but as part of continuing education, they can become more aware of these links in their practice, having said that there are also opportunities where hospitals are implementing things like decarbonization fellowships, where they're recognizing people who are trying to take on more sustainable ways of practicing medicine, running hospitals using systems that can be reused for care, as opposed to single use care. And we actually have a lot to learn from places where these resources are even more scarce. Countries that are in the developing world, many times, will have ways that they can sterilize equipment and then reuse that equipment, because they know that they don't have the luxury of much single use equipment, and yet have good health care outcomes. There are ways to be sustainable. One just has to care for it, which is why education is very important, and the medical community is no different than any other in learning more about these intersections between climate and health and also climate and mental health.

Helena Rambler  15:22

Shifting gears a little bit. Do you have a community that you talk about climate with in San Diego? I feel like, since so much of your focus is on community and the human aspect, how have you used your studying and used your work and placed your own life in this world?

Dr. Jyoti Mishra  15:44

So I like to be a part of many community efforts, and their efforts that are very much climate oriented, the various climate action organizations that are pushing for renewable energy availability in our communities that are pushing for greater climate action greener there are a lot of local organizations and also organizations that we all know about, say, the rotary clubs in San Diego Have eco rotary arms that are continually involved in weekly climate action, which includes a tree planting or clean up events or showing up to educate the public about sustainable diets and so on. There's not one specific organization, but there are many such organizations that I like to be part of on my evenings and weekends and show up for climate action.

Helena Rambler  16:47

So in your article, one thing that you wrote was weaving a new climate narrative, thus depends on reconfiguring the nature of experiences people have in such a way that reshapes how they perceive themselves. So could you give some examples of experiences that reshape how people perceive themselves in the groups around them.

Dr. Jyoti Mishra  17:08

Yeah, I think there are ways in which this played out. So there's, there's a great example that's part of the article where we talk about the ESG efforts, environmental sustainability governance goals for certain organizations. So why would organizations and companies want to take on sustainability goals and having a discussion within the company, across individuals and figuring out what are the ESG goals that would benefit both the profit for the company and give it better image, and would also be benefiting the environment and the employees. Many employees work in organizations where they have school going children who will ask them, What do you do every day that's promoting climate action? As more and more kids become educated about the state of the world, they will ask their parents the role that they're playing in this context. 

And so when companies take on ESG and sustainability goals, they are serving the people better. They know that the employee values and morals then align with the company as much as their income is dependent on it. It's always great to work for organizations where your values are fully aligned as much as you're just getting your salary from that organization. So it changes the way they see that these goals should be enacted, and even though they may make some of the processes in the company less efficient, aligning better with one's morals can be really drastically changing one's lived experiences.

Helena Rambler  19:00

To what you were saying about students. And I think that we see a lot. We see that youth gets really involved when it comes to these types of social movements. Or, like you said, when something is trying to change the status quo, what would you like to see from the youth, or just see in the future, in an ideal world?

Dr. Jyoti Mishra  19:20

Yeah, I think our youth are really smart and really engaging in this intergenerational dialogue and learning as much as possible about climate action. I know that youth are also very much part of not just learning about and absorbing the action, but doing more about it, how to amplify the movement, how to bring it to more students, how to when they are a voting age, to vote for the right policies, how to run for being a leader in the community, all of these things our youth are already doing. 

And my vision for our youth is really to continue to stay involved in these active processes and to amplify these processes and to understand that it's not just up to the youth generation to take climate action. This is really an intergenerational effort, and when you take leadership, there's a lot of support they can get from people of the older generations to amplify their work. I'm sure the teachers and mentors will help to expand your learnings and to not feel alone, and also to not feel apathy, to give up that, oh, this is the state of the world. Because especially when we think about mental health and well being that's built with being involved with our communities of peers, and also our communities across generations.

Helena Rambler  20:59

Great. So on that kind on that like same topic, I would say one of the main reasons why we started this podcast is because most New York City public schools do not have a climate curriculum in the governmentally assigned curriculum that these DOE schools get. So if you were to design this curriculum, for honestly, either high school students or all ages, what do you think will be the most important thing to include?

Dr. Jyoti Mishra  21:30

I'm a little biased, because I come from the climate change and mental health intersection side. I would love for students to and from conversations like this about people doing the work that they do in the field of climate and a sense of satisfaction to work towards something that would benefit our entire society or build and really protect our futures, which is why we work in this area, even though it may feel difficult, and learning from leaders is very important. At the same time, focusing on solutions is important. To give a positive take that there's actually a lot of technological progress in terms of how we can combat climate change effects, and to show students ways in which these this kind of technological progress and mechanisms that can come into play to protect our planet, these are maybe engineering solution in the natural sciences, and then also holistically study their psychosocial impacts, which is what we care about. The climate crisis can be distressing, which is why it's actually great to be taking action. We have a course here that focuses on transforming distress to action, and that means that we not only learn about climate change and climate solutions, but we also learn about how we can protect our own psychosocial well being in the context of such climate change. How do we take on practices that include self preservation from burnout, from feeling distressed or feeling apathetic. How do we feel energized about being part of a group of peers who are excited about taking action together? Learning about mental health skills is important. It can really promote a personal resilience in this context, must have some action component for it to really feel like this is that we're part of this movement, so having a climate action project that peers can do together is important. 

The last thing I'll mention in that framework is that we really think about collective efficacy. It's not that individuals alone can make a huge difference, say, one individual will try to cut their carbon footprint, then it's impossible in the current world to have, say, a very low footprint, because we are living in a system that does have a lot of waste and single use products, and one can get really frustrated just Trying to take climate action alone and then feeling that a community around me is not part of the action. Instead, if one focuses energy more on collective action, how we can convince others to be part of a sustainable movement, whatever our passion areas might be, they might be sustainable diets. They might be waste reduction. They might be native tree planting. There are numerous ways that individuals can take on their own passions and try to come together with peers to have a team that together goes out for certain action projects, building that collective efficacy in this movement is very important. And so education that includes all of these foci, some kind of focus on solutions, building our own mental health resilience in this context, and then engaging in projects that include climate action, should all be part of such education, you were speaking a lot about, like collective action and how it can feel a little bit discouraging when you're trying to do stuff alone with the support of others, is just so important. 

Helena Rambler  25:32

So how do you think you can get people to care who generally either don't care or they try to not think of it because it's like a scary concept to them.

Dr. Jyoti Mishra  25:44

I think everyone can start with baby steps. So even if you think about sustainable diets, some people may think about having a plant based diet once a week instead of all days a week. And even that is better than none at all, and it's really more about getting people to think about these issues in a conscious way, but not judging the magnitude of the action that people are taking. A lot of learnings happen during the process when you're building a team, how to you know any kind of school project that you might do, whether it be related to climate action or otherwise, you have to figure out how the team will work most efficiently together, how we're making sure that there's an equitable distribution of labor, and people are playing their role, and everybody's doing their part in the project. These things are discussed if they're discussed transparently in the team, then I think it can be a good project. 

There's a lot of leadership training that can come as part of this exercise as well, where you have to figure out how everyone that you're bringing in that in with the team, how do they align with the goals of the team. We're not bringing people in because they have to, but because they intrinsically want to, and figuring out that distinction is really important so that action then becomes something that they truly care about in the long term. But yeah, I think that question is one of the most difficult questions, and really relating to people's immediate lived experiences, their current emotions, and is very important. Meeting people where they're at is very important in terms of the issue.

Helena Rambler  27:36

Do you have any questions for me? 

Dr. Jyoti Mishra  27:39

One question is there a small group of students that are interested in this action, or many students, and are other schools interested? Or how is this going for you? 

Helena Rambler  27:49

Yeah, I think that's specifically with this podcast. I've definitely learned so much, and I think it's also been really great, because the way I've been learning but having these conversations at my school, there's three of us who are doing this podcast, and it's going to pass down. I would say I go to a very competitive school. I would say where I would like school, work and kind of college and all these stresses are always at the front of people's minds. It's not as big as I would hope it would be, but we have a environmental club, and I would say this year, at least, the meetings that we've had so far, we've had a pretty good number. It's been a lot of younger kids. My school is grades seven through 12. It tends to be the younger kids who put more time into thinking about climate change and, like you said, collective action. Yeah, I think that when students have so much to think about, I don't know. I think that this is also the case for adults. It's not just students, but it can be hard to balance different issues in the world and issues in your own life, and I think that a lot of people would rather prioritize themselves, and not necessarily in a bad way, I would say to just prioritize their futures and their studies. And yeah. 

Dr. Jyoti Mishra  29:28

yeah, I don't deny that at all. And you have to first take care of yourself to be able to take care of others. And yeah, that's why I think figuring out personal resilience is super important. I think you had asked me about, in some ways, figuring out why I chose the kind of careers in one of your questions, one of the things I really wanted to do was that I was really cared about science, but then I also really cared about mental health, because it's a way to serve people in a field that's neglected. And as I really figuring out how we can have careers that align with our values. It makes things a little bit easier going forward, I'm very heartened that a lot of the younger generation is trying to choose careers that have some sustainability goals attached to it, and as much as our systems allow that. Yeah, I'm excited about the changes that our new generations are making.