Protecting Youth with Psychosis: Early Interventions for Heat Exposure in Peru

This project takes an interdisciplinary, biosocial approach utilising UCL expertise in psychiatric epidemiology and medical-anthropology, alongside Peruvian community partner Socios-en-Salud (SES).

Project Summary

People living with schizophrenia (PLWS) have a heightened risk of death during extreme-heat events (Chen,2021), and hot temperatures have been found to exacerbate psychoses and increase the mental-health burden (Crank,2023). Extreme heat is a particular risk in the Latin- American desert, such as coastal Peru. Research into extreme-heating and mental-health is an emergent yet understudied field, and there is no data on the effects of heating on physical health and premature mortality for young people with psychoses, and scant data from the Global South in general.

To tackle this problem and effect change in policy and legislature, this project takes an interdisciplinary, biosocial approach utilising UCL expertise in psychiatric epidemiology and medical-anthropology, alongside Peruvian community partner Socios-en-Salud (SES), responding to following questions:
1.     What impact does extreme heating have on mental health of PLWS and what implications does this have on social and physical health in a heat-risk environment?
2.    How are hospital admissions for PLWH affected during periods of extreme heating?
3.    What are policy changes are needed to improve health services/outcomes for PLWS during heating events?

This project will catalyse health-service-change through stimulating inclusion of extreme-heat considerations in care and policy for PLWS in Lima and will directly contribute towards the GC Mental-Health & Wellbeing strategic-priority of ‘Working towards launching cross-sectoral Hub for Prevention and Early Intervention in Youth Mental Health’, further cross-cutting disciplinary siloes (medicine, social science) with cutting-edge, first-of-its-kind research.