Motivation and emotion/Book/2023/Eco-anxiety

Eco-anxiety:
What is eco-anxiety, what are its consequences, and what can be done about it?

Overview

Case Study

Figure 1. Student climate protests in Melbourne on Friday 21 May 2021.

On Friday, the 21^st of May 2021, thousands of school students and millions of people in general worldwide protested the inaction of leading governments concerning climate change and a desire for important decision-making processes to have more democratic and representative control. A corresponding march in Australia took place through a movement called School Strike 4 Climate, the most significant and largest climate mobilisation protest in the country’s history (see Figure 1). The underlying motivations of these environmental demonstrations reflects a deep anxiety many have with the future of the planet, and the role that human activity has in further exacerbating these ecological issues.

Given this reality, social scientists and researchers have sought to understand the phenomenon of eco-anxiety through quantitative and qualitative measures of those who experience it (Bourban, 2023, p. 65-88). Specifically, researchers have attempted to understand the different facets and components of the anxiety response, along with understanding the variety of negative consequences that may result from it. This research is of great importance because it provides insight into how people can adequately deal with eco-anxiety, so as to provide an effective pathway for people successfully managing their mental health and wellbeing.

Focus questions:

What is eco-anxiety?
What are the consequences of eco-anxiety?
How can eco-anxiety be dealt with?

What is eco-anxiety?

Climate change is a broad phenomenon encompassing a wide and significant range of the planet. Given the future of this planet, millions of youth worldwide have to psychologically prepare for what is to come. Social scientists have sought to empirically examine how people of recent generations are coming to terms with the current climate. According to a recent survey of 10,000 people from 10 countries, most young people expressed deep anxiety and indignation about what they perceived ahead[factual?]. Half or more Australians surveyed consistently felt in response to a range of questions that people have failed to care for the planet, humanity is doomed, there is less economic opportunity, family security is at risk, and valued things will be destroyed. In addition to experiencing general distress, there was resentment for political leaders who were viewed as having failed young people, betrayed future generations, not acting in line with science, being insufficiently proactive, dismissing genuine concerns, and not being entitled to trust (Hickman et al., 2021).

Definition

Doherty and Clayton (2011) define the phenomenon of eco-anxiety as “intense emotions associated with observation of climate change effects worldwide and anxiety and uncertainty about the unprecedented scale of current and future risks to humans and other species" (Doherty & Clayton, 2011). The Handbook of Climate Psychology refers to it as a "heightened emotional, mental or somatic distress in response to dangerous changes in the climate system" (Climate Psychology Alliance, 2020). Likewise, Bourban (2023) describes it as a "subjective trait, state or disposition turned toward a possible objective state of the planet in the near or distant future ... [i]t is a fear resulting from an acute awareness of the risks raised by global ecological issues. Eco-anxiety can lead to a generalized feeling of discouragement; taken to too high a degree, it can also become pathological," (Bourban, 2023, p. 67).

Components

Eco-anxiety is a multifaceted and complex psychosocial phenomenon that arises in response and reaction to perceived environmental changes, dangers and hazards. Researchers have long debated about how best to understand the different underlying facets and components of this anxious response. Many social and cognitive scientists have understood it to involve at least three core constituent elements (Kurth & Pihkala, 2022). The first component of this psychological phenomenon involves anxiety. The experience of anxiety gives rise to a variety of corollary emotions, such as nervousness and fear about uncertain threats and dangers. These emotions are primarily driven by apocalyptic agitations around death, destruction and extinction of the Earth’s climate and wildlife habitats. As a consequence, this dimension of eco-anxiety causes one to develop a defensive response, compelling individuals to take some form of action in order to curtail perceived threats and dangers.[factual?]

Additionally, eco-anxiety also creates a moral response. The emotional reactions underpinning this sentiment concern feelings around guilt, culpability, blame and wrongdoing. This moral facet is often generated and created by a manner in which the individual experiences a profound sense that they have made a significant contribution to environmental damage. Due to this, an individual can feel a compelling impulse to make amends and remedy past behaviour they believed negatively impacted the environment.[factual?]

Furthermore, those who experience eco-anxiety can also have a grief-induced response. The experience of grief is characterised by cultivating an emotional repertoire of loss, despair and depression concerning what one believes one will lose ecologically due to the effects of climate change and its myriad of long-term negative impacts. Consequently, grief-stricken individuals can experience a deep sense of mourning for a disappearing natural world, social withdrawal in response to inevitable ecological loss and nostalgia for a world that once existed.[factual?]

These are three important aspects of eco-anxiety that arise in response to ecological crisis. Empirical research has demonstrated that this a complex phenomenon that has three interrelated dimensions that serve psychological, moral and emotional purposes and needs. It is important for researchers and social scientists to comprehensively understand this psychological reaction as this has profound implications for how researchers can understand its consequences and impacts on people's mental and physiological welfare and what developmental strategies people can use to effectively cope and grapple with their anxiety and concerns with the state of the environment.[vague][factual?]

What are the consequences of eco-anxiety?

Eco-anxiety can have a wide range of negative impacts on individual people’s psychology. Within the context of empirical research, factor analyses have identified two significant factors[How do these two factors relate to the three factors in the previous section?] underlying eco-anxiety that can arise when individuals experience significant mental distress in response to environmental disasters and crises. These two factors involve cognitive-emotional and functional impairment (Clayton & Karazsia, 2020).

Various consequences can result from cognitive-emotional impairment. Specifically, this form of impairment can involve problems such as rumination, wherein individuals can be drawn into having obsessive and intrusive thoughts about their negative experiences and feelings regarding the state of the environment, which can lead to emotional anguish and a reduction in positive affect. People who suffer from this form of impairment can also suffer from a lack of concentration. The inability to concentrate on daily tasks, activities and obligations can have potentially high consequences for individuals who experience it, as it can corrode their ability to productively engage with relevant tasks as they heavily fixate on negative environmental issues (Clayton & Karazsia, 2020).

In addition to causing cognitive issues, cognitive-emotional impairment can also substantially erode one's emotional wellbeing. Eco-anxiety can produce symptoms such as sadness, grief, frustration, and guilt, causing uncontrollable crying. In more extreme cases, eco-anxiety can also have acute impacts, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A wide range of individuals can experience acute symptoms of trauma and shock; however, a smaller percentage of individuals can acquire the chronic disorder itself in response to ecological disasters (Clayton, 2020). These symptoms can have the negative repercussions of interfering with and disrupting a person's sleep patterns, exacerbating emotional strain and fatigue (Clayton & Karazsia, 2020).

Cognitive-emotional impairment is not the only component of eco-anxiety that can significantly affect an individual. Functional impairment is another factor underlying this anxious response. This form of detriment concerns difficulty engaging in social relationships and societal obligations. This impairment associated with eco-anxiety can greatly inhibit one's functional capacity to connect with others to form meaningful social networks and connections. The inability to construct and sustain social bonds can lead to isolation, loneliness, deprived knowledge, and empathic connection, thereby increasing anxiety due to environmental concerns and preoccupations (Clayton & Karazsia, 2020).

Eco-anxiety can also significantly reduce people’s sense of personal autonomy. Human independence is an important psychological need that enables and fosters self-reliance and empowerment in accomplishing basic and complex tasks. Thus, unpredictable changes in an individual’s environment can minimise a person’s sense of control of their own life and the ability to pursue and achieve their goals. Additionally, access to certain resources can be thwarted due to dangerous climate conditions that prevent people from obtaining the essential services they need to live a healthy and satisfied life, all of which can greatly enhance an individual’s level of anxiety (Clayton et al., 2017).

While eco-anxiety can harm everybody’s experiences and responses, the impact of this chronic reaction is not experienced evenly across different populations. Certain communities, such as racial and Indigenous minorities, children, women, elderly, people with preexisting mental conditions, individuals residing in at-risk areas and persons in specific work-related industries with direct exposure, are all more likely to be disproportionately impacted by eco-anxiety (Clayton et al., 2017; Clayton, 2020; Hickman et al., 2021). As a result, eco-anxiety exacerbates and perpetuates preexisting systemic inequalities that can further harm vulnerable and marginalised people and groups.

Quiz 1:

How can eco-anxiety be dealt with?

Climate change is a broad series of events encompassing a wide range of ecological processes on the planet. Rising sea levels, shifting shorelines, warmer temperatures, increased frequency of natural disasters, declining agricultural productivity, and crises related to food and water supply are all ecological phenomena individuals and societies will have to manage effectively. As a result, climate change can pose a significant threat to the integrity and welfare of many people. In response to this reality, individuals can develop a variety of defence and coping mechanisms in order to deal with threats to their wellbeing. There exist both adaptive and maladaptive pathways people can choose to adopt in order to deal with stress-inducing situations effectively. Adaptive pathways can be understood to promote healthy psychological adjustment, situationally appropriate behaviour, and positive affect. In contrast, maladaptive responses cause psychological misadjustment, behavioural disadvantage, and increases in anxiety (Climate Psychology Alliance, 2020).[factual?]

Maladaptive responses

Due to the vastness of climate change and often the lack of collective or systematic response to these environmental changes, individuals can easily succumb to the adverse effects of eco-anxiety. As a result, individuals can respond in a variety of poor and counterproductive ways. There are a variety of maladaptive pathways people pursue in order to avoid and escape the salience of stress.

Some coping responses involve attempts to alter the true nature of the environmental situation perceptively. Defence mechanisms such as denial, minimisation, and naïve optimism are means to achieve this. Denial involves the outright rejection of what is occurring; that is, the person dismisses that any climate crisis is taking place. Other strategies can include minimisation, which involves reducing the perceived size of the threat so the person can have the illusory sense that they are safe and secure. Individuals who adopt this approach can also psychologically outsource the problem into the future so they do not feel they have to take any responsibility for dealing with the emotions associated with it now. Additionally, perceptual reframing can also involve adopting a self-deceptive and unrealistically optimistic mindset to downplay and underestimate environmental dangers (Climate Psychology Alliance, 2020; Dodds, 2021).

Maladaptive responses do not just involve cognitive distortions. They can also encompass attempts to shift behavioural or emotional responsibility unto others or simply away from themselves. Individuals can suppress, dampen or escape the negative feelings associated with ecological challenges in order to avoid responsibly dealing with the negative emotions experienced. From a behavioural point of view, individuals can shift responsibility away from themselves and onto others to deflect any personal guilt regarding their contribution to environmental issues. Moreover, people can also choose to avoid any behavioural correction and resort to resignation if they feel doing so would involve not having to psychologically grapple with the enormity of the environmental challenges (Climate Psychology Alliance, 2020; Dodds, 2021).

All of these defensive maneuvers are maladaptive because they cause the individual to have a distorted perception of the environmental dangers and threats they will encounter as a way to protect against threats to self-esteem. While these coping strategies can provide short-term relief from stress, they can, in the long term, have profound and substantially negative ramifications for the individual's mental health and wellbeing, leading to poorer psychological and behavioural outcomes (Climate Psychology Alliance, 2020; Dodds, 2021; Weinstein & Ryan, 2011).

Adaptive responses

There are a multitude of ways individuals can develop healthy and effective coping strategies when dealing with eco-anxiety. A considerable amount of empirical research has demonstrated that cultivating positive networks and connections is essential to improving someone's mental wellbeing (Clayton et al., 2017). An individual's capacity to withstand significant forms of anxiety, adversity and trauma is substantially increased when they discover and nurture various connections with parents, children, family, friends, or other role models they cherish and respect. Intricate familial and supportive networks can provide someone with emotional assistance during stress, material provision, cognitive planning, moral support, and love.[factual?]

In addition to forming social ties, people who find themselves caught and situated in unpredictable or dangerous climate situations can learn to reframe difficult circumstances and find positive meaning regarding their plight. The consequence of this approach is that it allows individuals to escape the cycle of negative emotion and experience positive affect even during hard times, which could have significant implications for recovery. In conjunction with conceptually reframing bad situations, people can also acquire the skill of internal resilience. People who develop sincere and positive feelings about their ability to overcome external barriers are likelier to do so, thereby having high self-efficacy. Moreover, coping can also involve having an acute awareness of one's thoughts, feelings and behaviours in order to understand oneself and seek solutions and support when required. It can also involve self-regulation, which requires enacting discipline and controlling one's impulses in favour of long-term goals (Clayton et al., 2017).

Effectively managing eco-anxiety can also involve factors beyond an individual's own personal circumstances. Combatting climate change necessitates collective and systemic action, so engaging in social and political activism can provide people with a sense of agency and purposeful change that produces a strong buffer against eco-anxiety (Schwartz et al., 2022). There are a variety of social and political actions one can take to try and make a difference. These can involve engaging in public activism, assessing and expanding mental health infrastructure, climate science communication, informing community leaders about how to serve their constituents during and after extreme weather events, caring for vulnerable communities, or becoming a political representative and engaging community members yourself (Clayton et al., 2017). Thus, coping is not merely an isolated psychological process but is embedded within a broader societal context.

Finally, expressing compassion and mindfulness for others and the environment are reliably demonstrated ways to alleviate the anxiety levels experienced. (Climate Psychology Alliance, 2020; Dodds, 2013). In addition to seeking support from surrounding people, engaging in simple prosocial behaviours such as showing kindness and compassion towards others, providing solace to those hurt, charitable giving, volunteering, and offering empathetic counsel are reliable ways to alleviate the distress from eco-anxiety[factual?]. Having a meaningful connection with nature is also an activity that can provide a robust defence against eco-anxiety[factual?]. Many researchers have argued that separating one’s cognition from its wider ecological surroundings has caused much anxiety-related psychopathology[factual?]. Thus, individuals who spend more time interacting with nature can significantly reduce anxiety levels and the physiological and behavioural symptoms that follow, along with sustaining improvements in positive emotion (Grahn & Stigsdotter, 2003).

Quiz 2:

Conclusion

Eco-anxiety is a subjective psychological state involving intense and heightened emotions such as anxiety, fear, guilt and despair, brought about in response to environmental changes and ecological crises such as climate change. Millions of people worldwide experience this widespread psychological and behavioural phenomenon, and it can lead to various negative consequences. Individuals grappling with this distress may experience damage to their personal autonomy, cognitive capabilities and emotional wellbeing, leading to functional and behavioural impairments that significantly impact their mental state and relationships with others. The ramifications and impacts of eco-anxiety also do not affect everyone equally, as various vulnerable and marginalised groups are disproportionately at risk of the negative repercussions of this distress, thereby exacerbating and perpetuating preexisting inequalities. The unpredictability, inevitability and danger of climate change have significant consequences and implications for how individuals grapple with those ecological changes. How individuals choose to cope with these environmental issues can take on a variety of forms, as there are adaptive and maladaptive strategies that can be deployed in order to manage stress-induced symptoms.

It is crucial for the public to recognise and be aware of the fact that psychologists and researchers have identified effective, adaptive pathways and solutions to help individuals cope with the emotional distress caused by environmental challenges. This underscores the importance of scientists, political officials, community leaders and mental health professionals to communicate these findings to the public in a way that can be easily comprehended and understood. These psychological and behavioural strategies can be implemented by people in various social and personal environments and settings where anxiously salient events and situations can be effectively mitigated and controlled. While climate change in the future will continue to present significant problems and challenges to the planet and, thereby, people's psychological welfare, there are many resilient and versatile strategies people can use to safeguard their mental health and wellbeing.

References

Bourban, M. (2023). Eco-anxiety and the responses of ecological citizenship and mindfulness. In: Jay Kassiola, J., Luke, T.W. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Environmental Politics and Theory. Environmental Politics and Theory. (pp. 65-88.). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14346-5_4

Clayton, S. (2020). Climate anxiety: Psychological responses to climate change. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 74, 102263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2020.102263

Clayton, S., Manning, C. M., Krygsman, K., & Speiser, M. (2017). Mental health and our changing climate: Impacts, implications, and guidance. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, and ecoAmerica. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2017/03/mental-health-climate.pdf

Clayton, S., & Karazsia, B. T. (2020). Development and validation of a measure of climate change anxiety. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 69, 101434. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101434

Climate Psychology Alliance. The Handbook of Climate Psychology. Climate Psychology Alliance, 2020. https://www.climatepsychologyalliance.org/images/files/handbookofclimatepsychology.pdf

Coffey, Y., Bhullar, N., Durkin, J., Islam, M. S., & Usher, K. (2021). Understanding eco-anxiety: A systematic scoping review of current literature and identified knowledge gaps. The Journal of Climate Change and Health, 3, 100047. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joclim.2021.100047

Dodds, J. (2013). Minding the ecological body: Neuropsychoanalysis and ecopsychoanalysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 4. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00125

Dodds, J. (2021). The psychology of climate anxiety. BJPsych Bulletin, 45(4), (pp. 222–226.). https://doi.org/10.1192/bjb.2021.18

Doherty, T. J., & Clayton, S. (2011). The psychological impacts of global climate change. American Psychologist, 66(4), (pp. 265–276.). https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023141

Grahn, P., & Stigsdotter, U. A. (2003). Landscape planning and stress. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 2(1), (pp. 1–18.). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1078/1618-8667-00019

HEAL Network & CRE-STRIDE. Climate change and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, Discussion Paper; Lowitja Institute: Melbourne, Australia, 2021. http://doi.org/10.48455/bthg-aj15.

Hickman, C., Marks, E., Pihkala, P. P., Clayton, S., Lewandowski, R. E., Mayall, E., Wray, B., Mellor, C., & Van Susteren, L. (2021). Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey. The Lancet Planetary Health, 5(12), (pp. 863–873.). https://doi.org/10.1016/s2542-5196(21)00278-3

Kurth, C., & Pihkala, P. P. (2022). Eco-anxiety: What it is and why it matters. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.981814

Schwartz, S. E. O., Benoit, L., Clayton, S., Parnes, M. F., Swenson, L. P., & Lowe, S. R. (2022). Climate change anxiety and mental health: Environmental activism as buffer. Current Psychology, 34(5), (pp. 443-448.). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-02735-6

Weinstein, N., & Ryan, R. M. (2011). A self-determination theory approach to understanding stress incursion and responses. Stress and Health, 27(1), (pp. 4–17.). https://doi.org/10.1002/smi.1368

External links

School strike for climate (Guardian)
School strike (Home website)
What is PTSD (American Psychiatric Association)
Therapists and eco-anxiety (Scientific American)