Critical to overcoming adversity, resilience is the cornerstone of research projects led by professors Lei Cao and Tracey O’Sullivan of the Interdisciplinary School of Health Sciences, at the Faculty of Health Sciences. Cao is studying the effects of wildfires on the mental health and resilience of adolescents, while O’Sullivan is examining the inclusion, resilience and role of older people in risk reduction in a post-pandemic world.
The aftermath of a fiery summer
The 2023 wildfire season was the most destructive on record in Canada. According to Natural Resources Canada, fires burned more than 15 million hectares of land, an area larger than England. Quebec was the most affected province, losing 4.5 million hectares to blazes. More than 38,700 residents were evacuated from their homes, many from Indigenous communities.
An assistant professor in health sciences specializing in stress and mental health, Lei Cao seeks to understand how wildfire-related stress may affect the mental health of adolescents and how resilience might mitigate those impacts. She is recruiting two groups of adolescents aged 11 to 17 from the James Bay and Lake Abitibi regions of northern Quebec to compare how varying levels of wildfire exposure may influence stress responses and resilience.
The first group will consist of adolescents directly affected by wildfires and evacuations, and the second of adolescents who were exposed to wildfire smoke but were not evacuated. Participants will be asked to complete confidential surveys to assess their wildfire-induced stress and, optionally, to provide saliva samples for DNA analysis.
Through epigenetics, the study of how our environment influences our genes, Cao and her research team will examine whether wildfire-related stress is associated with epigenetic patterns linked to stress response and resilience. They will also look at the role of sex and gender in shaping stress responses.
“Epigenetic mechanisms may play an important role in how young people respond to environmental stress,” says Cao. “By identifying epigenetic patterns linked to resilience and vulnerability, we hope to better understand which adolescents may be more likely to benefit most from early mental health support.”
By offering insight into the long-term effects of natural disasters on adolescent mental health, the research could help inform targeted prevention and early intervention strategies for youth exposed to climate-related disasters, says Cao. She hopes to eventually expand her study Canada-wide.
“Climate change is not only about environmental factors,” she adds. “It can have direct and indirect effects on youth mental health. It’s essential to support this kind of research and to encourage public participation.”
Resilience has no age
While Cao’s research focuses on youth, resilience is equally critical in later stages of life. For more than 20 years, Tracey O’Sullivan has focused on how to inclusively engage people who are disproportionately affected by disasters. The COVID-19 pandemic provided her with a historic opportunity to study a cohort over the age of 60, a group often labelled as “vulnerable” or “high risk.”
In a SSHRC-funded study conducted in partnership with the LIFE Research Institute and the International Longevity Centre Canada, O’Sullivan and her research team interviewed 67 people during the first and second waves of the pandemic, and 37 of them between 9 and 12 months later. Many participants said that they didn’t view themselves as “vulnerable.”
“We looked at their lived experience of the pandemic. We asked them about their strategies of how to manage, and their thoughts about media representation of older adults,” says O’Sullivan. “A lot revolved around what contributes to resilience in older adults. They talked about barriers based on age. People wanted to contribute to their community, but because they were over 65, they were told they weren’t allowed back to their volunteer jobs, for example. There was this melancholy around losing those opportunities to contribute.”
She cites the example of a volunteer who wanted to return to driving cancer patients to their medical appointments but was refused because of his age. “He missed it. He felt it was a really important service that he provided daily,” she says.
O’Sullivan points out that older people are an untapped resource in reducing disaster risk. “Part of resilience is the experience you have accumulated throughout your life,” she says. “This lived experience has value.” She adds that her research is looking into what assets, such as a positive outlook or knowledge and skills gained over a lifetime, help people become resilient and continue contributing to society, and how to use those assets. She is also exploring the role of media in supporting disaster resilience among older adults, from the perspective of journalists and people over 60.
The ability to face and bounce back from disasters — or, perhaps more accurately, bounce “forward” — is key to building resilience, says O’Sullivan: “You bounce to a better situation as opposed to bouncing back to whatever situation you were in before.” The challenge now is to rebuild from COVID stronger and better prepared for any future crises.
“Part of resilience is the experience you have accumulated throughout your life. This lived experience has value.”
Tracey O'Sullivan
— Full professor at the Interdisciplinary School of Health Sciences