What is ‘eco-anxiety’, anguish for the planet that affects more children and adolescents – 04/22/2023 – Environment

“I was amazed as a psychiatrist,” says Debora Tseng Chou. “Respondents cite panic, difficulty sleeping and feeling like we’re running late on an urgent problem.”

They are Brazilian children and adolescents who told the researcher their concerns about climate change —which is expected to be the biggest crisis of this and the coming decades.

“We don’t expect them to be pessimistic about the future. Especially at a stage when life is seen with the perspective that it can be better”, she says.

Chou and his research colleague Emilio Abelama Neto listened to 50 young people between the ages of 6 and 18 in the cities of São Paulo, Itaparica (BA) and Salvador as part of an international study led by Laelia Benoit, from Yale University, in the USA, on emotions related to the state of the planet.

Part of these feelings fits into what has been called “eco-anxiety”: a word that, in English, has already been incorporated by the Oxford dictionary and is defined by the American Psychological Association (APA, its acronym in English) as “chronic fear of environmental catastrophe”.

“The expression ‘eco-anxiety’ begins to appear in the literature, even in ecopsychology books, in the 1990s. But we are only now seeing this theme gain prominence”, says Marco Aurélio Biblio.

He is president of the International Society of Ecopsychology, a field formally born in 1989 in the USA and which considers care for the environment as a fundamental condition for an individual’s psychic balance.

It is important to say that eco-anxiety “is not a pathology, it is not a mental illness”, as British psychotherapist Caroline Hickman, one of the leading experts on the subject, explains.

“The traditional anxiety generated, for example, by the fear of flying is something more particular to an individual. And the root of the problem can be difficult to identify”, she tells BBC News Brasil.

The anguish linked to the climate crisis, in turn, has a well-defined cause and is characterized by a collective feeling, says the psychotherapist.

“The feeling of impotence and frustration arises from the insufficient action of the powers that be and the lack of awareness in other sectors of the population.”

From the professional’s point of view, Biblio argues that the treatment for this type of disorder should not be the same as for traditional anxiety.

“Eco-anxiety has to be accepted as a real possibility and for everyone. So it is smarter in such a situation that therapeutic support is given, along with medication when necessary, confirming the value of the patient’s psychic fantasy, considering it as real data” he says.

“It is also important that the person who is suffering takes their place within this moment of serious crisis. The professional confirms what the patient is feeling and helps him to find a way to position himself in the world in order to alleviate the risk that the person feels”.

He recalls that “the risk of ecological emergencies has been pointed out for a long time. It’s not new. But we continue to live as if nothing was happening. Within ecopsychology, the idea began to emerge that we live in a kind of collective denial “.

“That is, in our organization of information, we remove from circulation those that generate anguish. And what is not transformed into perception becomes tension. Thus, the level of anxiety increases.”

An interviewee in the international study reported, according to researcher Chou, that young people try to avoid the topic in informal chats.

“A girl told me: ‘We don’t talk much about it, because we are 12, 13 years old. We want to talk about other things, make jokes. Despite knowing that these things [as mudanças climáticas] are important, we end up trying not to think’.”

However, we increasingly receive concrete evidence of climate change.

In Brazil, the most visible examples are the 2022 floods in Alagoas, Bahia, Minas Gerais, Pernambuco and Petrópolis (RJ) and, more recently, in São Sebastião (SP) and Maranhão.

Extreme events have become more frequent, and the vast majority of them are related to the increase in the temperature of the planet. The latest UN report speaks of a “key moment” and “that this is the decade for action if we want to change this situation”.

Hickman argues that anguish plays an important role now: a call to recognize challenges and face the crisis head on.

“It’s a mentally healthy response to what’s happening in the world today.”

An ‘eco-anxiety’ crisis a decade ago

Ecoanxiety, in fact, is related to the degree of awareness and level of information about the climate crisis. Before young people, scientists were the first to suffer from this strain.

Climatologist Alexandre Costa, professor at the State University of Ceará (UECE) and who maintains the YouTube channel “What would you do if you knew what I know?”, says that almost 10 years ago he entered a phase of deep depression with elements of ecoanxiety.

“It was because he was little heard [como cientista] and personal issues that intertwined. In 2014, I was invited to a symposium in Rio and missed the flight because of what I was going through. Because of the kindness of colleagues, I was convinced to get on the plane the next day”, recalls Costa.

During the event, he experienced a cathartic moment. One person in the audience asked “how did he manage to put his head on the pillow, how did he manage to move forward?”

“I took the medicine box out of the suitcase [ansiolíticos] and said: ‘I can only play doped up’. But the fact that I got into it years ago allowed me to build my defenses sooner.”

Chou observes that, among his 50 interviewees, the concern was related not only to the familiarity of these young people with the theme, but also to the commitment sought by their schools and families.

These elements are almost always a reflection of the socioeconomic background — children and adolescents from contexts with more structure and purchasing power have more information about climate change.

Social strata with fewer resources have a more microecological notion (cleaning the beach, recycling garbage) than a climate one.

But the psychiatrist says that the response of some against the triggers of the theme was “to seek engagement in some activities, both at school and through their families, to convert this anxiety into action and militancy”.

An apology to the new generations

The problem is also being reflected in the relationship between young people and their parents, says Caroline Hickman. A generational conflict over responsibility for climate change is gaining ground.

“I’ve seen kids who refuse to talk to their parents because they’re so hurt, so angry. Or who say, ‘Why did you have me knowing this was the world I was going to be born into?’ And it will grow even more.”

She says there is another path, indicated by the work she does with parents and children together: “If they work together to find solutions, not everything is lost. We can find intergenerational solutions”.

“But we will only achieve this if we apologize to the younger generations. We need to recognize that we screwed things up”, says the 61-year-old psychotherapist.

“That’s why psychology is important. For older generations to face the grief, guilt and shame they must feel.”

“Because younger generations are going to look at us and ask, ‘What did you do? Just because you’re not going to deal with this problem, you thought it could wait and let it go. Now the scale of change is too fast.’ “

Hickman advocates normalizing the theme, even with young children.

“Three-year-olds can understand to some degree the challenges of climate change, even if they don’t quite understand the whole thing. Adults may say that the right decisions are not always made, but that we can make adjustments to correct the course. And children members of the family can be a part of this, talking about the family’s day-to-day choices”.

Climatologist Alexandre Costa, who has three daughters, says:

“Today I will defend what I can from this collapse. We need the complete opposite of conformism, of ‘whatever’.”

As a premonitory verse by the German band Atari Teenage Riot, written more than a decade ago, asks: “Will it take another crisis to make another generation spring into action?”