Environmental factors could impact human behaviour – Social Worker

Mar 27, 2018 News

The recent Social Work forum in session

Global warming may very well have an impact on human aggression. Moreover, it is important that persons such as Social Workers, trained to deal with such issues, bear in mind that environmental factors could be directly linked to some of the psychological problems human beings face.
This brings to the fore the importance of Environmental Social Work. Environmental Social Work is an approach to Social Work with an ecological justification which highlights the need to pay attention to the natural environment
This disclosure was recently made by Ms. Shonell Smith-Enoe, Coordinator of the Social Work Programme at the University of Guyana. Smith-Enoe, who was speaking at a recent Social Work forum at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation, shared her conviction that “sometimes we fail to pay attention to the natural environment.”
She qualified her conviction by sharing, “recently I was reading an article which examined the effects of global warming on aggression. The results of that experiment [contained in the article] indicated that individuals’ tendency to act aggressive or violent, peeks during extremely hot weather.”
According to Smith-Enoe, “Persons become irritable when it is too hot, persons become frustrated when it is too hot and are easily fatigued…so tempers begin to rise.”
When such situations occur, she noted that Social Workers are required to stand in the gap. “When a man or a woman suffers heat stress and decides to abuse their partner, where do you think they come for assistance? The problem comes home to us, it comes home to you,” Smith-Enoe told a gathering of Social Workers.
She stressed that “it is important for us to make the wider link. Apart from the effects of heat on behaviour, there are droughts and flooding and various other natural disasters which also bring the problem home to us because we then, as Social Workers, have to offer assistance…”
Even as she turned her attention to Guyana’s oil find, Smith-Enoe underscored that it is imperative for Social Workers to advocate for safe environmental practices during drilling to ensure that not only the environment, but marine life, livestock, as well as the very livelihood of individuals, are preserved.
“These are the major issues, but there are also minor things that we must do to ensure that our environment is protected and we can do those things as individuals. Once the environment is affected, so are people…We therefore cannot afford to neglect our environment. It is necessary for us to make the link and ensure that both community and environmental sustainability is provided always within our country and within our world,” said Smith-Enoe.
She continued, “Let us not close our eyes to the environmental issues and believe that this is only a concern for the environmentalists or the scientists. This is a concern for us too, so it is necessary for us to make the link, communicate; sound your voices and let them know that Social Workers are interested in our world as a whole as much as we are interested in people, as much as we are interested in communities,” said Smith-Enoe.
According to the UG Social Work Coordinator, “I am aware that some of us are already involved in various forms of work around communities, as it relates to Environmental Social Work, but I want to charge you to keep up the good work and strive to do better. The world needs us, do not believe that it doesn’t,” she insisted.

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