Water insecurity and mental health in the Amazon: Economic and ecological drivers of distress

Abstract

Despite the abundance of water in the Amazon rainforest, people living in Awajún communities in northern Peru express concern over their water security. In this article, I employ a critical biocultural approach to examine how shifts from subsistence to market‐based livelihoods have created threats to water security that can “get under the skin” to influence the mental health of Awajún community members. Specifically, I show how highway construction, colonization, resource extraction, market integration, and overall transitions in settlement patterns have polluted rivers with sewage, refuse, and hazardous waste. I connect this broader context to ethnographic data from Awajún communities documenting struggles with water security in the form of contamination and accessibility. Finally, I quantitatively examine whether water insecurity scores are associated with psychological distress. Data drawn from 225 Awajún men and women from four communities in the province of Amazonas, Peru, revealed that higher water insecurity scores were associated with higher levels of perceived stress (β = 0.35, p < .01), depressive symptoms (OR = 1.32, p < .01), and somatic symptoms (OR = 1.51, p < .01). This study adds a critical political–economic perspective to anthropological literature focused on water insecurity and distress and advocates for future subdisciplinary collaborations to address growing concerns with the contamination and accessibility of local water sources.