Anxiety around the climate crisis is on the increase. But there are ways to help people engage with their environmental concerns without becoming paralysed by fear of the future.
There is a compelling body of evidence that so-called eco-anxiety – extreme worry about current and future harm to the environment caused by human activity and climate change – is a growing phenomenon in mental health. It’s become a thing – not just among children and young people, but across all ages and classes.
A recent survey, conducted by the Global Future thinktank and the University of York ahead of the current COP26 summit, found that 78 per cent of people reported some level of eco-anxiety – with 41 per cent reporting being “very much” or “extremely” fearful. Concerns about climate change were almost as common among older and working-class people as among those who are young or middle-class.
Meanwhile, a survey of young people across ten countries, carried out in September 2021, found that almost 60 per cent of 16 to 25 year olds were either “very” or “extremely worried” about the climate crisis – with 45 per cent saying that their feelings about climate change negatively impacted their daily lives and functioning. Experts from Imperial College London who collaborated on the research warned that eco-anxiety – which they described as “the chronic fear of environmental doom” – is rising in children.
An increase in eco-anxiety is certainly something that some mental health professionals have witnessed in their practice locally.
Emma Lewington, a Pathfinder clinician and mental health nurse working in Worthing and Adur, says that it is common for people of all ages to talk about their fears for the environment during client sessions:
“I think there is a mix of people’s everyday general concern about climate change, to this worry leading to increased symptoms in a person’s mental health condition – whether that’s anxiety, depression or paranoia. If a person is depressed, anxious and mentally unwell, any world concerns may seem even more scary for them and they may not be as resilient in managing their thoughts and feelings.”
Emma says that symptoms range from people being low in mood and increasingly anxious (particularly if they are already living with anxiety) to feeling that there is no point going on, adding to suicidal thought patterns. “I have also noticed that it can increase interest and fixation on conspiracy theories,” she adds.
It is important to allow people – and particularly young people and children – the time and space to discuss and explore their worries and fears. Approaches to address eco-anxiety need to come not only from the mental health profession, but also from education.
Dr Rebecca Webb is the co-director of the Centre for Innovation and Research in Childhood and Youth at the University of Sussex. With her colleague, Dr Perpetua Kirby, she is conducting research in primary and secondary schools in the UK and the Global South into the role of uncertainty in education in the context of climate change. As part of their research, Rebecca has visited schools in the South Coast of England to explore educational approaches to children’s concerns about the environment and to find ways of dealing with eco-anxiety.
“The premise of our research is that children are very engaged in climate change – and many of them are already immersed in climate change anxiety,” says Rebecca. “This isn’t just an issue about children’s emotional wellbeing; it is a curriculum and pedagogic issue too – about what we teach and how we teach it.”
She says that educators need to find ways of enabling children to have hope and to help them to take action. “The challenge is how to educate children to engage with climate change in ways that don’t paralyse them with fear. This is crucial, so that they don’t feel alone in a place of anxiety, so that they engage with climate change as part of their education – and understand what it means for them and what they can do about it in a motivational and mobilising way.”
Emma concurs that enabling people of all ages who are anxious about the environment to take action can be helpful. “We empower people to feel that they can do something about it, however small,” she says. “For some people, it might help them to join a local environmental group or to read more online. For others, it might be more about focusing on their self-care and general wellbeing.”
Rebecca says that children’s anxiety about climate change presents a substantial challenge for education. “In the first school we visited [at the time of the climate strikes], a primary teacher was asked by her nine-year-old pupil, ‘do we only have ten years to save the planet, Miss?’ Understandably the teacher found it difficult to know how to answer the pupil’s question. So this is a real challenge for educators, particularly in the context of a curriculum that says, this is right and this is wrong – and doesn’t cater for the kind of uncertainty and complexity that this issue requires.”
Parents clearly have a role to play too to assuage young people’s anxiety about climate change. “Be honest with children,” advises Emma, “but without adding the fear factor. Children know what is going on, so helping them to feel that they can make changes and be involved can change the focus for them.”
People working in mental health are well aware that this is an issue and one that is likely to grow in importance in the future. “I think climate change could have a bigger impact on people’s mental health in the future,” says Emma. “And that will be exacerbated not just but what we see online or on the television, but also by the real impact climate change will have on people’s lives.”
If you are concerned that a young person isn’t coping or is becoming unwell, you should seek professional support – through their school, your GP or mental health services. You can find sources of local support on this website.
