CLIMATE CHANGE DESPAIR DISORDER

If your doctor's waiting room is anything like the ones I've been in recently, its walls are decorated with posters warning of the dangers of diabetes, poor diet, smoking and the like. The posters urge that any concerns be discussed with your doctor. Well, expect to soon see climate change posters decorating doctors' waiting rooms across Australia: medicos have discovered the despair associated with climate change and are determined to do something about it:

"We can inform the debate with reliable data on the mental and physical health consequences of global warming, and utilise our expertise on human behavioural responses to overwhelming threat to convert despair into constructive action," Prof Kefford said.

"Doctors did this successfully in response to the threat of nuclear annihilation in the 1980s and we can do it again."

Australia's doctors will, of course, provide this service out of the goodness of their collective hearts and not simply as a means to create a whole new category of patient. Gee, this almost restores my respect for the medical profession. – my 90 year-old mother has no other family in Australia so I get to visit lots of doctors.