Eco-anxiety

A growing number of young people report that they are feeling stress or depression about climate change.

How Climate Change is impacting mental wellness

Fears of environmental collapse due to catastrophic floods, melting Arctic ice and the increasing frequency of climate disasters have caused eco-anxiety to surge globally. In 2017, the American Psychological Association defined eco-anxiety as “a chronic fear of environmental doom” and psychologists across Canada are seeing a growing number of young people report that they are feeling stress or depression about climate change. In Canada, mental health professionals have largely contributed the effects as the evolution of concepts such as “solastalgia, defined as ‘feeling homesick while you’re nonetheless at home’ of general ecological grief and eco-anxiety.

While it is not a clinical diagnosis, Dr. Joti Samra, a psychologist in Vancouver, says that psychologists are becoming more aware of eco-anxiety to help people better manage this chronic fear. The APA has actually declared eco-anxiety as an area that psychologists have to attend more and more to because mental health professionals are starting to see increasingly how climate change is negatively impacting people's mental health in a global way.

In February 2020, the APA passed a resolution that outlines their commitment to working with other scientific, professional, policy and communities around the world to battle mental health issues associated with the changing climate. The APA President Dr. Sandra L. Shullman reported that the natural disasters that countries are experiencing are associated with a number of mental health problems, including anxiety and depression. As experts in human behaviour, they argue that psychologists must be at the forefront of devising strategies to change the action - by individuals, corporations and governments - that lead to climate change.

Dr. Samra tells us that eco-anxiety is a very new field for psychologists, but is one that mental health professionals believe is going to become increasingly prevalent.

"When I first started to practice 20 years ago there was no such label. Now to start to have words that are starting to describe a particular emotional experience that is very tied to specific stressors is new and unique and it certainly is something that I see expanding over time as globally our climate starts to change, it weighs on many of us."

According to the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA), psychological trauma from a natural disaster is 40 times greater than trauma from a physical injury.

Eco-anxiety isn't equivalent to a clinical nervousness issue, however doctors say fears regarding the atmosphere can decline or trigger previous emotional wellness issues. Indigenous people who live in the Arctic circumpolar north depend on the differing degrees on the common habitat and the resources it accommodates their way of life and employments. As a result, these Indigenous people groups might be increasingly touchy to global climate change, which has suggestions for food security, social practices, mental wellbeing and prosperity.

The Canadian Arctic is broadly viewed as a worldwide hotspot of the impacts of present and future environmental changes, Canadian North is where both land and society are powerless against environmental change. For Canada's more than 50 000 individuals who live in little, remote, generally beach front networks dispersed across around 31% of the nation's landmass.