New Study Links Ozone Pollution to Increased Anxiety and Depression in Schizophrenia Patients

The findings underscore the importance of considering environmental factors in mental health discussions and the potential need for more sustainable urban planning.

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A new study published in Psychiatria Danubina finds that higher concentrations of the air pollutant ozone are linked to more severe anxiety and depression symptoms in service users diagnosed with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. The current work, led by Giulia Menculini of the University of Perugia, suggests that policy makers should concentrate on laws to make urban environments safer and more sustainable for the improved mental health of residents.

While many studies and treatments about mental health concerns have focused on internal and individual causes, the current research out of Italy examined how air pollution might affect mood and psychotic symptoms. Their study provides a possibility for effective interventions beyond the individual and additional reasons to address pollution. The authors write:

“The association between urbanization, air pollution, and serious psychiatric disorders deserves attention due to the impairment of overall quality of life and functioning exerted by these conditions, which are also linked to a significant economic and social burden. In particular, growing evidence suggests that air pollution exposure may increase the risk for developing psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia.”

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Tsotso Ablorh
Tsotso Ablorh is a doctoral student in Clinical Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She primarily researches improvements to culturally relevant therapeutic methods based on the experiences and needs of marginalized peoples; including methods for training therapists, decreasing therapist cultural biases, and assessing the effectiveness of therapist training.

6 COMMENTS

  1. It’s cuz you get high in ozone. Ozone is very high usually and it’s at the top of the Earth mind that we call the sky. It’s full of see through spirit people who talk only electrically. Sylvia Plath thought it was where she burnt carbon monoxides. What a gas. And her final words literally were: “Her blacks crackle and drag”.

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  2. I’m going to tempt you with an infinite wealth of ugly averageness that is too loud to ignore but to ugly to endure. It’s what we call the human world, that post-industrial dystopian existence we call ‘reality’, where a healthy existence was exchanged for McDonald’s, Walmart and Costa Coffee. This disease afflicts all the capital cities of the world today none of which maintained their innocence from Ronald Macdonald. This dirty old man has by now despoiled billions of people for many billions of dollars of dirty money extracted from both the labour and the custom of the world’s poor. And the Earth picks up the tab for the disposable packaging and destructive animal industries used to fatten up the human pigs who endure meaningless existence as surely as any farm animal used to feed them.

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  3. If the whole of humanity started breathing exclusively ozone instead of oxygen, I predict all the world’s problems will meet their solution within approximately 12 minutes. Sure, a few nuclear meltdowns would follow but this damage doesn’t even compare to one days worth of noisy, destructive and meaningless civilization.

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  4. Perhaps the corporate executives and their enablers in government and elsewhere who knowingly pollute the environment for financial gain should be the ones diagnosed with “severe mental illness” and placed in institutions. They pose a far greater risk to human life and the biosphere in general than so-called schizophrenics and other unfortunate people in emotional distress.

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  5. We should add electrosmog and weather conditions in relation to humans and pay more attention to them. We live in an electromagnetic field – in and around us.

    Perhaps the key is to think more physically than medically – and finally reduce the medicine of “mental illnesses” to absurdity.

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