Eco-anxiety is a serious concern for young people

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Dana Taylor:

Hello. I’m Dana Taylor, and this is a special episode of USA TODAY’s The Excerpt.

Devastating rains in Texas, Hill County, on the morning of July 4th created deadly floods that have now claimed over 100 lives and counting. The catastrophic rains took place in a region that’s known as Flash Flood Alley, causing the Guadalupe River to rise from less than a foot on July 3rd to more than 34 feet by the morning of July 4th. Experts say that warming temperatures over land, and especially in the gulf, are stoking extreme rainfall events across the United States, largely due to climate change. The fear these super storms are unleashing in young people has a name, eco-anxiety. How can we maintain our mental health in the midst of our worsening climate? Here to help us explore the topic is Caroline Hickman, a psychologist who has specialized in treating eco-anxiety for decades. She also sits on the board of the Climate Psychology Alliance, a global coalition of mental health experts whose focus is anxiety related to global warming. Thanks for joining me, Caroline.

Caroline Hickman:

Thank you for inviting me.

Dana Taylor:

Let’s start by taking a step back here. Can you please define for us what eco-anxiety is?

Caroline Hickman:

So eco-anxiety is also eco-distress, depression, despair, frustration. It’s a whole range of emotional responses that people have in response to what’s happening globally in the world, in terms of climate but also biodiversity loss, ecological stress. It’s a mentally healthy response when we look outside and see things getting worse on the planet. The first response is often anxiety and fear. We have a fight-flight response. Where can we run to? What can we do about this? But the anxiety and the distress doesn’t stop there. It moves then quickly to, and what are people doing to take care of us? People in power, what’s happening around us? Because you can feel like you’re just this very vulnerable individual that doesn’t have enormous power to do anything about this global crisis. So the anxiety is twofold. One, it’s in relation to the climate, and then two, it’s in relation to other people’s responses.

Eco-anxiety is on the rise

Climate change isn’t just wreaking havoc on the environment, for young people it’s also feeding a mental health crisis.

Dana Taylor:

The condition of eco-anxiety has been around for decades now, but at least one study indicates that it’s getting worse. You are on the front lines of this battle. What are you seeing and hearing from young people on this?

Caroline Hickman:

It can only increase. When we talk about it getting worse, we have to be clear about what we mean by that, but it will only increase as the pressure of climate change increases, and we are going in the wrong direction when it comes to stopping and mitigating and changing the impact of climate change on the planet. So it makes complete sense that alongside that, the mental health impact will also continue to increase. I just want to be careful when we talk about things getting worse, because it changes constantly in relation to what’s happening on the planet. It does not mean that young people are becoming more fragile or themselves developing more mental illness. They will have more severe psychological responses to this, but that’s because it’s in relation to the planet getting worse.

So we’re seeing more increased weather events, climatic events, increased flooding, increased wildfires, increased storms, and they’re increasing in severity as well as frequency, so what will go along with that is the increased psychological impact of that on young people. And again, I would come back to if they feel that people are not taking that seriously, then they will be left feeling more and more worried and upset.

Dana Taylor:

Are there other differences you can point to in comparison with, say, a decade ago?

Caroline Hickman:

Yes, absolutely. We saw a significant increase in eco-anxiety or eco-distress during and following COVID. During COVID, no matter how you might feel about that, we saw governments react and respond to this swiftly around the world, and it was variable around the world, but we did see swift action. During that time, I saw young people’s anxiety and distress increase considerably in relation to climate change, because they were left thinking, “If we can react like this to COVID, why can we not react like this to climate change when actually climate change is going to pose a greater threat in the long term, particularly to the futures of children and young people?” So I saw an increase during that, and then every year when you see the return of forest fires, the return of heat domes, the return of flooding, and we see the pictures, the images online, in the news, even if you’re not directly impacted yourself, with the communication increase around the world about this, we see young people getting more and more worried and upset and angry about this.

I want to clarify that we are talking about both direct impact of climate change but also indirect impact of climate change. So you can be impacted by being involved in floods or fires or heat, but also indirectly impacted by witnessing other people struggling with it around the world. Now, I wouldn’t put the blame on media or social media communicating about this. People want to know what’s going on, but it’s incredibly distressing watching other people fight for their lives or run away from these threats. And what that does is it sets up a helplessness in the individual, because you want to think, “Well, what can I do to help?” So you anticipate what might happen to you, but you also have an empathy and a concern and a care for what’s happening to other people.

Young people in particular are very connected globally. They’re online, they’re talking to each other, they’re witnessing what’s going on, and they relate to what’s happening to young people elsewhere in the world, say in Africa or Bangladesh, India, and they don’t feel disconnected from that just because they live in Europe or the United States.

I’ve seen an increase in referrals for young people for therapeutic support. I’ve seen an increase in young people joining community action groups and speaking out about this. I’ve seen an increase in young people spearheading legal cases around the world, pushing governments to take action on climate change. So we’re seeing young people find different ways to make their voices heard, but it was already bad five years ago. 10 years ago, I think there was a lot of belief that we would still take action and there was still more time to take action, and increasingly over that 10 years, what we’ve seen is a loss of faith in young people that people will take action, and that results in a form of moral injury. The very people that should be taking action, leaders, world leaders, are not only failing to take action, but they’re lying about it and they’re saying that they’re doing what needs to be done whilst frequently doing the opposite. So young people increasingly are not just feeling frightened of climate change, but they’re losing faith in governments and leadership around this.

Dana Taylor:

I know your work has evolved over the years from global in-person therapy pre-pandemic to a lot of remote work with different groups. Where are you seeing the biggest mental health impacts today?

Caroline Hickman:

Well, that’s a fascinating question. The United States is particularly hard hit I think. It’s a country that is very much on the frontline of climate change, but is such an enormous country with such variability across the country, so I’m seeing more and more and more referrals from people living in the United States. Europe, people living across Europe, Europe is facing some of the worst impacts of climate change, but in many ways, the young people are actually freer to speak out. I think it’s impossible to really measure any one particular country, but I’m just noticing an increase in referrals, particularly from the United States and across Europe.

One of the things to be clear about is that children and young people in the United States or Europe that may not be facing the direct physical impact of, say, children and young people in Bangladesh or Nigeria or the Philippines, for example, who are facing terrible floods, the children and young people in the US and Europe are not protected from this cognitively or emotionally.

So if I give you a couple of figures, it’ll illustrate that. In the 2021 research that we published, which with 10,000 children and young people in 10 different countries, including the US, the global average told us 74% told us the future was frightening, 56% told us that humanity was doomed. 48% told us they were dismissed or ignored when they tried to talk about climate change. So you can see that young people are not being protected from the impact of climate change, even if they’re not personally directly impacted. So we’re not able to protect our children, even if they’re not personally threatened by wildfires or floods. We can’t protect them from the cognitive and the emotional impact because they will feel it, they will think about it, they will know about it, and they need us to respond to that.

Dana Taylor:

And finally, what’s your advice to the adults in the room on the issue, whether they be parents, teachers, or others? How can they appropriately respond to young people who are in an existential crisis regarding climate change?

Caroline Hickman:

So first of all, acknowledge that this is a relational distress, and what children and young people want is to be seen and heard and understood, and that is the number one thing to reduce the distress. Don’t minimize their distress. Don’t tell them to go back to school, don’t tell them to stop worrying about it. Of course, go back to school, but at the same time, acknowledge the distress that this is causing and say to them, “We are not expecting you to fix this for the rest of us, but we need to work together to think about this, and you’re not on your own with this.” So take their distress seriously. Even if you don’t fully understand it, take it seriously because it’s how they feel.

We wouldn’t dream of telling our children and young people to not be worried and upset or scared if they’re facing the issue of somebody in their family having a health problem or dying. We wouldn’t dream of dismissing their upset. In fact, we would find ways to talk with them, even very young children. It’s no different to that. So parents, you have got the skills to deal with this, but what you have to do sometimes is deal with your own feelings of guilt and grief and upset in order to be able to listen to your children, have courage, and then sit down and talk with them and say to them, “Okay, we will find a way through this.”

And there are ways to deal with the relational distress alongside taking practical action in the world. Find practical projects that you can get involved in, community projects, projects at school, mental health projects supporting young people. There’s many around. Sign up to them and join them, and then you’ve got a sense of community. You’re not on your own. But always, always, always say to young people, “Even if I don’t fully understand, help me understand. I want to understand it through your eyes, even if that’s different.” And that in itself helps children immediately, because then they don’t feel they’re being silly.

What hurts the most is if you feel you’re the only person in your family that is upset by this. Children shouldn’t be left feeling that way. I’m going to quote a ten-year-old. This was a number of years ago, and I thought I understood but he said to me, “Caroline, you don’t fully understand.” He said, “You grew up thinking polar bears would be there forever.” He said, “I am growing up knowing they will go extinct.” So we have to use our imagination and our curiosity and our respect for children and young people, that it is a different world that they are inheriting from us, and we might feel bad about that but there is a lot we can do about that, and number one is tell them the truth and be honest with them about what’s going on, and then find ways to take action together.

Dana Taylor:

Listeners can find a link to more resources in the show notes. Thank you so much for being on The Excerpt, Caroline.

Caroline Hickman:

Thank you.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@USAToday.com. Thanks for listening. I’m Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA TODAY’s The Excerpt.