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Doctors have long warned of the dangers of extreme heat and how heat related stress can be fatal and now researchers say there’s a need to raise awareness about the impact of rising temperatures on mental health too.

Dr Jasmine Liu from the University of Adelaide is a co-author of a study published in Nature Climate Change which warns rising temperatures could increase the burden of mental and behavioural disorders by almost 50 per cent by 2050.

“As long as we are aware that this is an issue and it’s going to get worse and the burden it will cause to the healthcare system, then the next step is how are we going to take action to help people adapt and mitigate.”

Heat and health researcher Simon Quilty from the Australian National University in Canberra says he has witnessed the impact of extreme heat while working as a doctor in the Northern Territory.

“That persistent elevation in body temperature results in impulsivity and poor decision making and so they are quite subtle from an individual point of view but what we do know is that rates of suicide go up in hotter weather and other indicators of mental and social stress like domestic violence skyrockets in very hot weather and that’s really closely tied to people’s ability to cope and to escape from the heat and so that immediately translates into the fact that poor people, who have less resources, will not be able to escape the heat as easy as people with resources.”

Associate Professor of Psychology at La Trobe University in Melbourne Glen Hosking says one negative consequence of rising global temperatures is climate change anxiety.

He says when there’s uncertainty over how global warming is managed, the anxiety increases.

“A lot of climate anxiety is fuelled by an uncertainty about what it’s going to mean. An uncertainty about the future. An uncertainty about the impact that this is going to have. And one of the things that can really help people is if they feel that policymakers have a sense of control, a sense of plan about how this might be managed and how these impacts might be mitigated.”

Simon Quilty says the state of public housing in Alice Springs is an example of how policymakers are missing an opportunity to reduce the health burden of extreme heat.

He says none of the public housing has rooftop solar.

“The impacts of extreme heat spill across the entire community if they are not addressed. So, for me, the obviousness of rooftop solar in a town like Alice Springs is obvious to everybody. In fact, in Germany, most public houses have solar rooftops because the government in Germany knows that people are poor and that these problems ripple onwards throughout the community. Alice Springs has the highest rates of solar pretty much anywhere in the world and yet we don’t embrace solar panels on rooftops for public housing.”

At an individual level where people are lucky enough to have air-conditioning, he says they should consider setting the temperature at 26 or even 27 degrees Celsius rather than opting for a lower setting.