Industrialization has brought us many wonderful additions to the human experience, including technology, motorized travel, and medical advances that have radically altered how we live, think, and interact. Yet, when we gaze around our world and the challenges that this "progress" has created, industrialization can feel as destructive as it does helpful. Our minds, emotions and nervous systems cannot always keep pace with the innovations that we have been able to create. Within this gap lies a great deal of mental health symptomatology that can be addressed using wisdom from mental health healing traditions that seek to help the human mind adapt and adjust to new circumstances.
Building triple bottom line projects is an efficient way to create environmental sustainability while helping societal needs and addressing mental health of the general population and those who are traditionally identified as "mentally ill." Often, we create the world we inhabit using "silo thinking" rather than "integrative thinking," when in fact, nature creates its models of life based on systems that nest within each other. This interdependence creates an opportunity for robust ecological systems to be created and thrive where linear models stall and disappoint.
Hopelessness and helplessness are two of the largest components of mental illness. Many are experiencing emotional symptoms in response to their worries about pollution, climate change, and decreased access to the natural world. Many people with psychiatric conditions of all kinds lead positive, productive and satisfying lives. They often do so by finding a way to live in concert with who they are within the world around them. As a sense of purpose, self-esteem and mastery increase, mental illness shifts to mental health. Just as these individuals create gratifying lives by positively shaping the worlds they live in, we have the opportunity to create the same positive outcomes on a much larger scale. By making environmental sustainability projects happen, hope for our future increases, as well as a sense that who we are and what we do really matter.
...How anxiety and terror about environmental degradation are worsening global mental functioning and leading to a rise in mental illness.
...How we have created a world in which both humans and things can be thought of as "garbage," and how to recreate a world that appreciates the reality that "there is no 'away'"
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