Way, Way too Hot…

Stress of any sort is bad for our physical and mental health.  That’s why The Space Doctors often cover topics such as aligning environments with the task at hand and personality and culture, for example.  Also, when we’re stressed by one aspect of our environment we tend to feel more negatively about others, whether that sort of “reverse halo effect” (which is known as a “horn effect”) is deserved or not.

In these pages we often talk about using colour to make a space seem a little warmer or cooler than it actually is (when we’re in a space with more cool colours we do feel significantly less hot than we do when we’re in an area featuring warmer ones).  We also talk often about the consequences of feeling hot or cold, for example, here.

In “How Heat Waves Take a Toll on Mental Health” Hannah Seo (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/19/well/mind/heat-mental-health.html ) gets deep into how being too warm, what’s technically known in the psych biz as an “ambient stressor,” can wreck havoc with our wellbeing: “Studies have found links between rising temperatures and a range of mental health issues including mental fatigue, aggression and even higher rates of suicide. This connection is not just limited to surges in temperature . . . it’s also present for people living in climates where it is consistently hot. . . . experts say, it’s clear that oppressive heat is linked with worse mental health. . . . ‘When we’re not comfortable, we’re not at our best,’ said C. Munro Cullum, a clinical neuropsychologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center, in Dallas. The discomfort of heat, and the energy it takes for the body to cool down, can lower overall resilience. So agitation, irritation and pain become less bearable, he said.”