Mike (00:15.588)
Hello and welcome to the Delgado Podcast, a show featuring conversations with academics, artists, and authors who challenge the way we think and help us grow in empathy and compassion. Today we're joined by Dr. Mishra. Dr. Mishra is a neuroscientist, associate professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego, co-director of the UC Climate Change and Mental Health Council, and the founder.

of the Neural Engineering and Translation Labs. Dr. Mishra's interests are the intersection of neuroscience, digital engineering, and integrating machine learning methods to personalize and inform mental health care. Dr. Mishra, thank you so much for joining the podcast today.

Jyoti Mishra (01:01.587)
Sure, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me, Mike.

Mike (01:05.624)
So Dr. Measher, I was wondering if we could start, if you could share a little bit about your journey and what led you to be interested in studying climate trauma specifically and why it was important to separate out climate trauma as a specific condition.

Jyoti Mishra (01:20.756)
Yeah, so these are two separate questions. My journey really is from a personal perspective of being a concerned citizen of this planet and believing in sustainability and taking care of our planet as someone growing up and having that kind of moral purpose being

Part of who I was in my family and as someone just, you know, we need to live in a, if we consider ourselves as citizens of this planet and we look at other organisms that live on this planet, they're not destroying the planet while we are. And so how can I have the least personal impact? That is something that was a value just growing up in our families and we can.

do that for our children, myself I continue to that for my child and both my children and so on. And then actually, as a neuroscientist, I've been very interested in studying the brain and how our environment regulates brain function. And our environment includes immediate environments such as our family, but also our community and the changing environment in terms of the climate.

And I was not studying climate change and the effects of the environment on our brains until about a decade ago when we had the campfire, the really devastating and actually the deadliest wildfire in California was the Campfire of 2018, which hit the town of Paradise, wiped that town out and really impacted Butte County.

in our state, which happens to be one of the poorest counties as well. I chanced upon that work actually connecting to them through my first grader who came home one day with a flyer for a penny drive, a penny fundraising drive to say, we need basic needs in this wildfire.

Jyoti Mishra (03:44.106)
can you donate your pennies for it? And this was a drive that they'd effectively put together all throughout schools, all throughout California. And the head of the Basic Needs Program over there got to contact them. And since then, I've done community-based wildfire research, mental health research, and not just in California and other places too.

Of course, I don't wanna put wildfires in one compartment. That is something I've studied the most. But yes, this also is parallel to the impacts that one sees with other disasters like floods or hurricanes. Now, coming to your question of why we need to selectively look at this, because actually the impacts are complex.

We see symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety. We see cognitive impacts, especially the ability to pay attention is very much impacted largely because we're not able to suppress distracting information. So an individual who's impacted by a disaster such as this may feel highly distracted and that's part of the survival instinct of the brain.

Mike (04:50.34)
Hmm.

Jyoti Mishra (05:04.892)
where our brains are constantly scanning for threat when they have gone through a threatening experience. And therefore anything in the environment could be a relevant signal that is signaling threat in some way. And so individuals feel that everything around them is important and our brain sort of makes us feel that everything could be a threat, therefore it should be salient, therefore...

the brain brains are tired and distracted and aren't able to make decisions properly. Now, this sort of complex set of symptoms, we need to understand this better, also develop treatments for it. And also what I want to note is that this kind of trauma is not like one individual's PTSD. This is community wide trauma that happens.

people who are directly impacted. There's people who've lost their homes or have family members who are part of the disaster. Those people are most impacted. The symptoms are the severest. But what we also find is that people who are indirectly impacted, those who have witnessed such a disaster in their community but have not personally suffered.

Those individuals will also show these symptoms. So what happens is the numbers, the prevalence numbers are that almost 40 % of the community can show signs of trauma. And what I wanna end with, because you asked me two questions in one and became a long answer, is that collective...

Mike (06:50.55)
Yeah.

Jyoti Mishra (06:55.252)
This is climate trauma is collective trauma. It's community wide trauma. Thinking that almost every other person in the community where this disaster has happened has this trauma to some extent. And for collective trauma, we need collective healing, which means coming out and supporting each other.

and in the recovery efforts and so on. So it's not just one person's PTSD and therefore it needs its own characterization.

Mike (07:27.748)
Can you talk a little bit about what that looks like for the person who may not be directly impacted, but maybe they are, you know, listening to the podcasts, watching the news. Like right now we have horrific fires happening in Los Angeles and many of us are glued to the news watching and we may have family or friends who are impacted. What does that climate trauma look like for that person?

who, like what would be some of the things that they should be mindful of that they may be impacted indirectly?

Jyoti Mishra (08:04.628)
Yes, so feeling low mood, feeling anxiety, also a sense of survivor guilt that how come my neighbor's home burned down but mine didn't and so having a sense of guilt around that. Feeling a sense of obviously hopelessness of having lost a community. You're not just attached to your personal home. It's great that your home survived and

You don't have to do that rebuilding effort, but you lived in that community and seen, you know, it's beautiful nooks and crannies and how what a wonderful place. The lanes that lead up to your home, know, that seeing that destroyed can have a very, can bring a very traumatic experience and also feeling a sense of hopelessness, hopelessness.

that what is the best way that I can be of help to my neighbors, to the people who have suffered the most, and am I able to actually channel this distress that I'm having into some kind of action? So the negative way of dealing with this distress for someone who's indirectly impacted is, let's say doom scrolling.

and looking through our media and our phone and constantly changing channels to see, hey, where's the next disaster? Being in that threat mode, our brains do go into that threat mode and just staying with that threat mode. That's a negative way of dealing with it. And the positive way of dealing with it is figuring out how I can be immersed in rehabilitation efforts within my community.

And that may be hard too because certain coordinated efforts may not have come into play yet or you're not in touch with your neighbors who are in distress or other situations may make it an impediment for you to be of help. And in that case, you're patiently waiting. And if you really want to be of help, especially in the mental health space,

Jyoti Mishra (10:23.248)
I would highly recommend looking at psychological first aid trainings. These are available on the web online. These are eight hour trainings at the max, but you can take them for free. And then you can actually be someone who can provide very important rehabilitative first aid psychologically to your neighbors, to your friends. So if you're waiting to say, how can I be of help?

I really want to channel my anxieties into something positive, but you haven't found a way where you can personally volunteer or so on, then this is one way to think about it, especially if your personal traits make you want to provide psychological first aid or you have that kind of skill set. Of course, you can spend your time with donating towards the cause.

as well. you know, one thing we need to do is figure out for us who are survivors from far or you know, helping our community, how we can model being calm individuals, how we can follow routines and you know, positive

activities in a way that inspire other people to say, I live in a resilient community, I can bounce back. And especially be that role model for our children who are going through this. I know in the LA area, kids have school off or have had school off. Some schools are starting, other schools have not started yet, but there's still smoke in the air. There's still toxicity. They're gonna have...

breathing issues. Kids are very susceptible to emotional distress. So this is a time for us adults to be as calm around our kids and making them feel safe, making them feel like we can get through this.

Mike (12:30.52)
You mentioned what clinicians and mental health professionals can do by getting some of psychological training. What advice do you have for them who are directly working with people who have just gone through a wildfire or some sort of...

crisis in their environment, things that they should be looking out for. know, like social workers will look at like the biopsychosocial spiritual model with all of your research looking at wildfires and impact on people's mental health. What are some things you would say that clinicians need to be mindful of when they're talking with somebody who's just been through something traumatic like this?

Jyoti Mishra (13:07.84)
Yeah, thank you for bringing that up. I think mental health awareness has grown by leaps and bounds in the last even five years. At the time that the campfire happened, after that, there were individuals in the community who would contact me to say, thank you for your research, but my healthcare provider doesn't quite recognize my symptoms as being driven by this disaster that.

I underwent. So the healthcare community, the mental healthcare community really needs to understand that these disasters can have a long lasting impacts on our mental health. And what I wanna highlight there is the longterm focus. After the smoke subsides and the fires are gone a week out from now, the mental health impacts can still be long lasting. They can continue from the acute stage to the chronic stage.

which can be very worrisome. That's what we need to prevent, but that still continues in about 40 % of the community. When we sampled the campfire, this was almost a year out after the fires had burned. And still that many members of the community who were showing those symptoms. So these are long lasting effects. One of the ways of really starting out at efficacious treatment is

to first acknowledge what the patient has gone through and to acknowledge that a disaster such as this can have long-term mental health impacts, including long-term cognitive impacts. So even if you're not suffering from low mood, we see significant impacts on attention and decision-making that I was telling you about before. And you may not be able to hold up your daily routine activities, your work, life.

you know, the things that you need to do on a day-to-day basis to get through your work day and so on. And people are having these symptoms a year out and they sometimes don't even connect it to the disaster that they went through. But this is happening in the community at large. So acknowledging these symptoms is very important for our mental health care support providers. I also want our providers to recognize that this is a time for

Jyoti Mishra (15:32.326)
not just compassion for our patients, but also oneself. The providers that are helping out the community are the ones who are really in the thick of it. They are in that LA region and potentially looking at pro bono support for their community.

but really also please take the time to take care of yourself and your own mental health and practice self-compassion. Take a break. This is impacting every community member, including our first responders, our firefighters, our social workers who are in the field. So it's very important that we keep in mind that we need to take care of ourselves as well.

Mike (16:23.076)
really glad you brought up cognitive function because that's something that in the mental health field we may not be looking at specifically because we might be looking at emotional distress, depression, anxiety, PTSD as symptoms, but we may not be drilling into things like brain fog and things like that. Are there specific tests or types of questions you're asking individuals or you encourage clinicians to be asking individuals as they're kind of doing an intake assessment?

Jyoti Mishra (16:51.392)
I think one can definitely take the lived experience as the gold standard. So not to ignore when a patient talks about symptoms of inattention, of being highly distracted, of not being able to make important decisions, especially when it comes to recovery efforts. There's so many choices how to...

make the best path towards recovery that also is within the means of the individual? These are important questions. And how to make these questions when one is literally suffering from a phenomena that we now call the fire brain, this hyper aroused, hyper threatened brain? We find that the neuroscientific research shows that essentially,

When one is impacted by such a disaster, our brains go into this hyper alert mode, especially our frontal cortex that is helping to execute all of our cognitive behaviors. And this is really interpreted as the brain being in threat mode, that it's overworking, it's an overdrive to...

to think that everything in our environment is unsafe, is threatening, especially to our survival and therefore I must pay attention to it. Even when it's not the case anymore, even when the disaster has surpassed, one's brain is wired to think that way, which is something that needs to be corrected and it can calm down with therapies. It's just that one needs to acknowledge that this happens and

When you say, again, diagnostics, one can obviously ask questions around ADHD and you'd see those symptoms. And of course, ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder. It's not that the person's developing ADHD at that point in time. It's just those symptoms are manifest because of the trauma that they've undergone. And so taking the lived experience as standard is important.

Jyoti Mishra (19:02.428)
In our research, we do standard cognitive tests that are objective measures of cognition. They're not asking questions around your attention status, but they're actually doing a test where they have to pay attention to certain things while other stimuli on the screen are distractions. And then we are able to measure how distracted they are. then...

in other tasks, they're making decisions, actual decisions, and then we see how well they're making decisions that are basically bringing them long-term gains versus impulsive decisions. So one can do objective tests. I would say this is not required in the clinic in any way. Please take the lived experience as the standard and take that seriously.

Mike (19:52.516)
There's a lot of people right now who maybe don't have time to even get mental health support because they're so focused right now on just getting safety, finding housing, right? What would be some things you would say from your research, interventions or things that they can do in the meantime while they're waiting before they get a chance to maybe talk to a clinician or a doctor?

Jyoti Mishra (20:16.66)
Yes, so if you're in the acute phase, I would say some of the most important factors that I have observed in our data that protect the well-being of the individual include, number one, physical activity, which means that please move around during the day as much as you can. Physical activity can be a great resilience booster for the brain. If it's...

not the right environment outside, there's still smoke in the air and you can't move around outside or go for a run. Think about physical activity inside, put on some music and dance to it. Dance can be extremely therapeutic. And beyond physical activity, the way we take care of our minds is through mindfulness. You talked about mindfulness a bit. And essentially in these moments, it's important to understand that

I am in a safe space at this moment. The more I immerse myself in the present moment, I am able to disengage from the threat and the trauma of the previous moment and not let it slip into my present self and my present moment or my future moment. So practicing skills of mindfulness and...

is very important at this point in time. It also helps us calm down. It helps our bodies calm down and really, you beyond mindfulness, we also see that individuals who have good family supports and social supports tend to bounce back faster. So please do not hesitate to reach out to your family and your friends and this is not your task alone to rebuild.

Reach out to people to help you in the rebuilding effort. People want to help you at this point of time. They are thinking about you. if you can get good help from others, that will help you recover from the situation better. So I'd say those are important things. And try to, in general, try to maintain...

Jyoti Mishra (22:38.738)
a daily routine as if there weren't a disaster. I know it's not possible or it can be very challenging, but the more you can try to model calmness and routine activity, the more your brains can get into a state of less hyperarousal.

get to be in a more normalized state that, I'm not under threat anymore. And again, this is all even more important when we have children in the house who are watching us and seeing how calmly we're responding to a situation such as this.

Mike (23:23.716)
What advice do you have for the clinician who is working one-on-one with a client or maybe in a group therapy setting where the clinician maybe feels maybe a little bit concerned because maybe they don't have the lived experience of having gone through that trauma and maybe feels like I'm gonna get called out. Why should they listen to me? Even though they're there to host a conversation.

They can feel a little bit concerned about that. So I'm just curious about for your advice for the clinicians who are working with individuals How it may be how to approach it and also if you have suggestions around? Best practices as far as like evidence-based interventions or therapies like mindfulness

Jyoti Mishra (24:10.892)
Yeah, so I'll just put it out there. I'm not a clinician. I work very closely with clinicians and I'm a neuroscientist by training. I would say that clinicians, know, good clinicians usually have really great active listening skills and they're able to listen to the trauma, incredible trauma that people have undergone and show empathy and compassion towards that experience even if

they have not undergone that experience themselves and that's its own really amazing skill set and to continue to practice that. sorry, I blanked out on your other question.

Mike (24:56.576)
no, no, no. I guess I was just curious, like in your research as you looked at the data around populations that have experienced wildfires, have you seen anything as far as types of therapy models that have been successful, like cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, or mindfulness? Have you seen anything like that as like what has been like most effective in helping folks?

Jyoti Mishra (25:23.604)
Yeah, so the field of climate trauma is a new field in itself. So being able to define climate trauma, being able to say that this exists and our clinician should pay attention to it and that it can be long lasting and to have awareness around that, it is in itself a huge step. Beyond that, when we think about mental health treatments, we're not trying to redesign the wheel. We're not saying...

let's figure out new treatments. Our treatments exist and they're all efficacious at their own level. There's no real comparator study right now that CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy is better than other forms of therapy or prescription medications are better than therapy. There's no real good evidence-based research around that. What we know is that there's going to be a huge

population that's going to need help and that we figure out how to provide those supports as best as we can. And while professional support is coming to people, they're, you know, they're in the on a wait list to meet a psychiatrist in that time, of course, you know, practicing mindfulness skills, compassion skills, both for the self and for others in the community, being able to

participate in relief efforts and contribute to positive community building again. All of this can be very beneficial to mental health. That's been shown. But yet currently there hasn't been good research around if there's a specific kind of therapy that's most helpful in the aftermath of a climate disaster. What I would say and what I think would be effective is

this collective healing would be effective more than individual healing. Being able to see how your own personal experience is part of sort of a common experience that many of your neighbors have undergone, that can itself help alleviate some of the anxiety. So I do feel that group therapies in this situation can be very effective.

Jyoti Mishra (27:44.863)
One thing I'd give a shout out to is work that I've done in the domain of eco therapy. This is not something that's been studied or can make much sense in the acute phase because eco therapy is basically studying mindfulness in nature and it's kind of like exposure therapy where you are exposed to the

situation that traumatized you except that you're, you know, so when you go through a climate disaster, you're, you're seeing the natural environment around you really just melt away in case of a wildfire and burn away. And so anything that, that triggers that experience becomes a negative, traumatic response in your brain. And you need to, your brains sort of need to then understand that, actually

not every experience in nature is a negative experience. Nature can be very relaxing, it can be very healing, especially when you're back in a safe spot. in chronic survivors who still suffer from mental health symptoms, but this is months after a disaster, many places in California, but also outside of California have started eco-therapeutic groups where

individuals practice mindfulness in nature together and are able to relate to their climate trauma experience as well as nourish themselves with the calmness of the nature that's around them. And that we find does have positive mental health benefits. We're looking at its long-term benefits. We definitely see immediate benefits of ecotherapy.

but we're also looking into how long lasting those benefits can be for an individual. know, climate trauma is within this sort of larger perspective of ecological destruction that's happening around us. And when we think about restoration of the environment, it's

Jyoti Mishra (30:04.454)
restoration and rebuilding that needs to happen of our homes, of our environment, and that includes our inner environment too. So it's all connected, right? The environment that's inside us is connected to the environment that's outside us. And so let's be good stewards of the outside environment. And that outside environment is a great healer. And so eco-therapy takes advantage of that. It leverages that ability of nature to just help us be calm.

Of course, that comes at a time when you can access a space that's natural and calming. So that's not something we can do while we're still under fire threat within the community. And I really hope that the situation improves in LA and our surrounding areas soon.

But yeah, those are the things that are happening in the field, but it's not that we need to reinvent the wheel. Existing therapies can work, we just need good access to them.

Mike (31:08.644)
Yeah, fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. Before we go, you've written a book and one of the themes here has been around how do we support our community and also our children. And I did see that you've written a children's book. I if you can kind of mention that a little bit.

Jyoti Mishra (31:23.26)
Sure. Well, I'm a neuroscientist, so the book I wrote is called The Little Brain, and The Little Brain is about lifelong learning and sharing your learnings with others, and you can find that on Amazon. And I think my journey is about learning about many different fields, such as working at this intersection of climate change and neuroscience, which didn't really exist as something that I studied when I trained.

to become a scientist, a neuroscientist. And also a shout out to my 12 year old who wrote a book on climate change. It's called Listen Up Kids, Our Climate is Changing. And it's about climate solutions and how kids can be involved in this endeavor. And we're all gonna have to be part of it. So that's also available on Amazon. So thank you for letting me talk about those books.

Mike (32:19.64)
fantastic and I'll make sure to link to both of those books in the show notes of the podcast and on the blog. So thank you so much again for Dr. Mieschriff for coming on the show.

Jyoti Mishra (32:27.775)
Thank you, Mike, it was a pleasure to talk to you.