COMMENT
DR JULIA SHAW:
CLIMATE CHANGE IS ALREADY HAVING AN EFFECT… ON OUR MENTAL WELLBEING
People’s growing anxiety about the future of the planet is becoming increasingly obvious, but it’s not an entirely bad thing
How worried are you about environmental issues? If thinking about climate change and biodiversity loss stresses you out, you’re not alone. Psychologists are trying to understand this feeling – referred to as eco-anxiety – and they’re finding that this worry may be essential for our fight to save the planet.
In late 2021, Australian applied psychologist Teaghan Hogg and colleagues proposed a new scale to help us measure eco-anxiety: the Hogg Eco-Anxiety Scale. It uses 13 questions to capture our complex feelings about the environment.
The scale asks about negative emotions like feeling nervous, on edge or afraid about environmental issues, including global warming, ecological degradation, resource depletion, species extinction, the hole in the ozone layer, pollution of the oceans, and deforestation. The scale also measures whether we ruminate on these issues, to see if we’re unable to stop thinking about climate change or losses to the environment.
It also asks how these thoughts and feelings change our behaviour, such as whether they lead to difficulty sleeping, working, or enjoying social situations, and how responsible we feel for the crises we’re facing – for instance, whether we feel anxious about the problems our personal behaviours are causing for the planet, or that our individual actions will do little to solve them.
If you just thought, “wow, that’s me most days”, then you probably have high eco-anxiety. This is common around the world and across all ages, but it seems to be the most pronounced among young people.
In 2022, researchers working with UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, published the first large-scale international survey on climate anxiety in children and young people. They surveyed 10,000 people aged between 16 and 25, across 10 countries (Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, India, Nigeria, Portugal, the Philippines, the UK and the USA). They found that 59 per cent of people were very or extremely worried about climate change, and 84 per cent were at least moderately worried.
Tapping directly into facets of eco-anxiety, the UNICEF researchers also found that half of the children and young people reported feeling sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless and guilty about environmental issues. More than 45 per cent said their negative feelings about climate change affected their daily life, with fears about the future dominating their thoughts along with deep feelings of betrayal from governments.
“The climate crisis is a very real danger so it’s good that our brains are trying to make us pay attention and do something about it”
This is a potential problem for mental health. Constantly feeling anxious and worried about the climate can lead to chronic stress in childhood, which can have long-lasting consequences.
So are young people in danger of becoming mentally ill because of the constant stress these issues have on them? In a review of research on the health consequences of eco-anxiety published in 2022, a team of Spanish and Brazilian researchers found that it is associated with depression, anxiety, stress, insomnia, lower self-referred mental health, impairment to memory and attention, and a reluctance to have children.
This doesn’t mean that today’s young people are all going to be crippled by eco-anxiety. But it does mean that we need to keep an eye on the psychological effects that climate change is having.
There is a positive side to eco-anxiety, though, as it has been linked with pro-environmental action and climate activism. It’s because of this that some researchers have argued that, overall, eco-anxiety is a good thing because it’s a practical anxiety.
Anxiety is the body’s way of telling us that we may be in danger. This anxiety leads us to try and figure out what that threat to us is, driving us to find more information and figure out a solution to make us safe. The climate crisis is a very real danger, so it’s good that our brains are trying to make us pay attention and do something about it, because that’s how we counter this threat.
The researchers who examined the link between eco-anxiety and health found that pro-environmental action could buffer against this anxiety evolving into depression. Which is to say that if you’re experiencing eco-anxiety, then simply carrying out behaviour that is good for the planet – like recycling, petitioning local government officials, joining a march, or taking trains instead of planes – might also do wonders for your mental health.
DR JULIA SHAW
(@drjuliashaw) Julia is a psychological scientist at University College London, the author of multiple best-selling books, and the co-host of the hit podcast Bad People on BBC Sounds.
Listen to Dr Julia Shaw on the Bad People podcast, available on BBC Sounds.