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UC Psychiatry Experts Tell Assembly Fires Trigger Lasting 'Fire Brain' Symptoms; Recommend Community Psychological First Aid
Summary
Dr. Elisa Appel of UCSF and UC climate-health colleagues told the Assembly that climate disasters spur both immediate behavioral health crises and persistent disorders in roughly 20 percent of exposed people; they urged scaled community training in psychological first aid and resilience education, with special attention to youth and students.
Dr. Elisa Appel, a psychiatry professor and vice chair at the University of California, San Francisco, told the Assembly Health Committee that wildfires are producing both short-term psychological distress and longer-lasting mental health conditions in a substantial minority of exposed Californians.
"We already know there's a tremendous mental health epidemic here as well as globally and we cannot meet the need," Appel said, summarizing multi-campus UC work on climate and mental health. She described a syndrome…
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