Understanding the concurrent risk of mental health and dangerous wildfire events in the COVID-19 pandemic

Highlights

• Little research has examined the mental health risks of concurrent disasters.

• We examined crisis response during the 2020 wildfire season and ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

• We implemented two quasi-experimental analysis to evaluate adolescent mental health impacts.

• No statistically significant increases in CTL-crisis events during the 2020 wildfire season were observed.

• The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic was the main driver of crisis in adolescents and young adults.

Abstract

Little research has examined the mental health risks of concurrent disasters. For example, disasters like wildfires have been shown to have a strong association with psychological symptoms—the 2020 U.S. Western wildfire season was the worst on record and occurred while the country was still navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. We implemented two quasi-experimental analyses, an interrupted time series analysis, and a difference-in-difference analysis to evaluate the impacts of wildfires and COVID-19 on mental health crisis help-seeking patterns. Both methods showed no statistical association between exposure to wildfires and the seeking of mental health support during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results highlighted that 2020 wildfires were not associated with an acute increase in crisis texts for youth in the two months after the events, likely due to an already elevated text volume in response to the COVID-19 pandemic from March 2020 throughout the fall wildfire season (Aug to Oct 2020). Future research is needed outside of the context of the pandemic to understand the effects of extreme and concurrent climatic events on adolescent mental health, and targeted interventions are required to ensure youth and adolescents are receiving adequate support during these types of crisis events.