Is Eco-anxiety the Future of Our Mental Health?
By: Athina Kontolati
Tags: Environmental Issues, Climate Change, Environment, Future, Psychology

Is Eco-anxiety the Future of Our Mental Health?

If we don’t act immediately, yes, it will be.

Photo by Fernando @cferdo on Unsplash

What is the first thing that comes into your mind when you hear the words “climate change”?

Now, think about the second thing that comes into your mind.

And now the third.

Did any of your thoughts include its impacts on our mental health? And if so, was that your first, second, or third thought? When we think about climate change, we tend to overlook the importance of its psychological consequences.

“Imagine you go outside and you look up in the sky, and there is a comet there. And… you just have been told by scientists that that comet is racing toward the Earth and it’s going to kill everybody and everything in a big fiery storm, [but] nobody notices the comet. And you say, “Hey look, there is a comet and it’s going to kill all of us”, and people don’t seem to care.”

In 2017, the American Psychological Association (APA) co-published a report, which focuses on the impacts of climate change on mental health. Just reading the introductory note, you can understand the importance of future related implications. As it is mentioned, depression, stress, social and community tension, aggression, violence, and crime are all associated consequences. The report also touches on eco-anxiety, which is termed in its glossary as “a chronic fear of environmental doom”. [1]

Searching further, other definitions of eco-anxiety — or climate change anxiety — describe it as an existential fear, as it is mentioned, for example, by Dr. Steffi Bednarek, Psychotherapist, in this video made by BBC Northern Ireland. Dr. Bednarek also describes it as “an anxiety about the future and a trauma that we have not experienced yet, but that we know is going to come our way.” She says that although climate change anxiety is a relatively new term, it’s not new as a phenomenon. [2]

What makes you understand better the feeling of eco-anxiety are the descriptions that sufferers give in BBC’s video.

“When big ecological disasters happen around the world, I feel a sense of anxiety, I feel a sense of sadness and a sense of loss,” says one. Another sufferer explains his eco-anxiety in a hypothetical context saying, “Imagine you go outside and you look up in the sky, and there is a comet there. And…you just have been told by scientists that that comet is racing toward the Earth and it’s going to kill everybody and everything in a big fiery storm, [but] nobody notices the comet. And you say, “Hey look, there is a comet and it’s going to kill all of us” and people don’t seem to care.”

But what exactly triggers eco-anxiety? In the video, the people who talk about their experience also refer to thoughts that make them feel eco-anxious.

For instance, one of them says that when he thinks about the fact that other parts of the world are more severely impacted by climate change, that triggers his anxiety. One of the other interviewees mentions “the fear of people mistreating each other out of panic and fear” as one of his most stressful thoughts. Getting emotional, anger, powerlessness, frustration, and helplessness are feelings that the third interviewee in the video says she experiences due to thoughts related to climate change.

What those people have in common is that they care about the environment and its protection; they care so much that the state of their mental health is seriously affected.

So, what we’ll happen in the future if we don’t act sufficiently and on time at the present? Will everybody — whether they care or not about climate change now— suffer from eco-anxiety?

In countries such as Bangladesh that have already been severely affected by climate change, it seems that the immediate impacts of the phenomenon on mental health are already noticeable. For example, this is evident through the work of Psychologist Amanda Carrico, Ph.D. Carrico, as it is mentioned in this article on APA’s website, was told by a family in rural Bangladesh that they anguished over migrating to India to find work, after the productivity of their farmland was negatively impacted by climate change. [3]

As you can understand, or even have experienced yourself, agonizing over leaving your country and moving to one characterized as an “increasingly hostile to immigrants” is a mentally straining situation to be. This, among other things, proves how climate change can affect adversely one’s mental health.

Thus, thinking about possible scenarios and taking into consideration how climate change already affects many people psychologically, it seems that the most likely answer to the questions stated previously is this: Our future and that of generations to come will be impacted by eco-anxiety, severely.

If substantial action is not taken now, everything at some point will get worse. Then, we will all feel eco-anxious, because it won’t longer have to do with mere thoughts about events happening “somewhere else”, but with experiences related to events happening in the cities we all live in.

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