Eco-anxiety in children and young people: What we can do to help

Whatever you call it, eco-anxiety, eco-paralysis, eco-grief or eco-anger, the impact of the awareness of climate crises on people's mental health and emotional wellbeing is increasingly being felt, particularly by children and young people (Clayton & Karazsia, 2020).

One comprehensive global survey of 10,000 young people found that 72 per cent of 16 to 25-year-olds in the UK feel that 'the future is frightening' (Hickman et al, 2021). More recently, the BBC earlier this month reported Google Trends data which shows a 27-fold increase in climate anxiety search interest in the English language over the last six years. The number of children experiencing climate anxiety in the UK has also increased over the years, according to a survey for Save the Children in 2022.

But what is eco-anxiety and what can we as a profession do to manage it?

What is eco-anxiety?

Eco-anxiety encapsulates a range of interconnected emotions such as fear, worry, anger, guilt, shame, hopelessness, and despair. However, the literature (Searle & Gow, 2010) often does not distinguish between the interconnectedness of various feelings, referring to a singular experience of climate anxiety. 

For practitioners, we'd suggest it's probably more helpful to remember that a range of responses exist, rather than try to over define or label the response.

Many young people will already be contending with the overwhelming volume of (mis)information online and the impacts of more frequent extreme weather conditions. For young people, who will have to bear the greater brunt of climate impacts, their distress is exacerbated when their concerns are invalidated or minimised by well-meaning adults, failing to act.

If we as practitioners engage with the issue, overcome our own fears, and regulate our own emotions about climate change, we will be able to respond to others' needs from a place of balance and empathy. Just knowing that adults are engaged and 'doing something' is helpful.

Below are some suggestions to guide practice.

What we can do to help ourselves                                             

• Reflect on our own relationship with nature and identify our responses, including any cognitive biases that may keep us in a state of denial or paralysis. We need to understand and process our own emotions about the climate crisis to be able to hold space for others.
• Develop an environmentally aware practice/supervision/training. To become climate aware and educate ourselves on the science, politics and solutions to climate change.
• Use our privilege to speak up and become climate advocates and engage in environmentally-friendly practices in our day-to-day practice.
• Be proactive in managing our own eco-anxiety, engaging in preventative behaviours such as taking care of our own physical health, avoiding 'doom scrolling' and being vigilant for climate 'thinking traps' such as fatalistic thinking, which may make the anxiety worse than it needs to be. We should only aim to support young people in moments where we ourselves feel regulated.

Suggestions for practitioners working with families and schools

• Normalise and make regular space for discussions around all feelings, including feelings related to climate change.  Incorporating a 'feelings check in' whenever the topic comes up. Holding or attending regular 'climate cafés' or 'climate staffrooms' can provide staff, parents and pupils with a safe space to share difficult feelings.
• Explicit teaching of climate 'thinking traps' and self-regulatory strategies when children are feeling grounded and calm e.g. breathing exercises.
• Formalise climate action through an eco-council or sign up to programmes such as eco-schools, or have an energy audit of buildings. This can help spread the 'containing' message that the systems supporting children are taking action.
• Teachers and parents to model eco-anxiety regulation for themselves e.g. "I was feeling so sad and a bit scared when I saw that news piece on the glaciers melting, so I went for a walk to reflect on it… I feel a lot calmer after…  It reminded me that we all need to be taking what action we can, so I've switched to a renewable electricity provider."

Suggestions for therapeutic settings

• Be curious and attentive about what implicit and explicit worries young people might bring to a therapy room. Consider if it's appropriate to incorporate the impacts of living during the climate crisis into assessment and formulation as we do with family or cultural contexts. 
• Be mindful of the language we use while describing climate distress. We would advise following the client's lead. Using clinical terms to describe adaptive responses might create a feeling that there is something wrong, and thus in need of being 'treated'. It is important to make sense and aim to uncover the meanings of these subjective experiences through phenomenological inquiry.
• Acknowledge and validate young people's climate distress. Perhaps refrain from challenging the client's thoughts or describing their thinking as catastrophic. 
• It is very likely that you might encounter parallel processes of sitting with uncertainty in a therapy room while clients face uncertainty in their lives regarding climate change and their future. Explore what it like is for them.
• Explore more sustainable ways of engaging with climate information (e.g. 10 mins every day) as continual exposure to information might evoke a sense of being overwhelmed.
• Some people experience a sense of fear which can create a sense of paralysis, while action may be an antidote to that. If appropriate, one can discuss what is in the client's zone of control and what they can do by implementing the SMART goals technique.

Above all, we would wish to avoid 'vicarious avoidance' and prevent this topic from becoming taboo with young people. As with all tricky topics, adults taking action and leading the way in facing the difficult emotions around climate crises will give young people the best start in facing it too.

References

• Clayton, S., & Karazsia, B. T. (2020). Development and validation of a measure of climate change anxiety. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 69, 101434.
• Hickman, C., Marks, E., Pihkala, P., Clayton, S., Lewandowski, R. E., Mayall, E. E., ... & 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), e863-e873. 
• Searle, K., & Gow, K. (2010). Do concerns about climate change lead to distress? International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management, 2(4), 362–379. https://doi.org/10.1108/17568691011089891

About the authors

Dr Maya Gimalova, a counselling psychologist, and Dr Louise Edgington, an educational psychologist, are members of the BPS Climate Environment Action Coordinating Group.

If you'd like to get in touch to discuss any aspect related to eco-anxiety/climate change, email Maya Gimalova at: [email protected], or Louise Edgington at : [email protected]