Girls and boys deal with climate crisis anxiety – Laurie Goering

As climate change causes an increase in deadly disasters – and with scientists’ warnings of the worst to come – young people find themselves grappling with growing ecological anxiety about the future of the planet and their lives. . This is stated by some psychologists in a study published in preprint in the medical journal The Lancet.

Their feelings of anger, fear and helplessness come not only from environmental damage but above all from adults’ unwillingness to stop them. And this despite the many solutions available and the overwhelming evidence of existing risks, the research supports.

“Ecological anxiety is a sign of mental health, a very appropriate response to what is happening,” says Caroline Hickman, psychotherapist and lead author of the international study. According to Luisa Neubauer, a German activist from the student movement Fridays for future (which will return to the streets in cities on September 24), the inertia of world leaders towards global warming is something “too big to manage or accept. What impact does it have on young people to see the world crumble when we have solutions available and we know how to stop the crisis? The state is pushing us into the abyss, ”he says.

Here are the results of the study, conducted on ten thousand girls, boys and adolescents in ten countries around the world.

More than half of the people surveyed – in countries such as India, Brazil, Nigeria, the UK, Australia and the US – said they fear for their family’s safety and that anxiety affects their ability to sleep, study, eat or sleep. to play.

Four out of ten said that the climate crisis makes them unsure about having children, and more than half of them admitted that they believe humanity is “doomed”.

“We were baffled by these percentages, by the proportions of the anguish,” says Hickman, who sits on the organizing committee of the UK’s Climate Psychology Alliance.

Girls and boys from the Philippines – hit by increasingly severe cyclones – and from Brazil – a country victim of deforestation – are the most worried: among them there are nine out of ten. But even those living in richer countries have reported high levels of distress. “I think people are increasingly aware of how threatening it is, especially for a young person, to look at the life that awaits them knowing that we will spend every single year in the midst of the climate crisis,” says Neubauer.

The impact on everyday life of these high levels of anxiety and the feeling of betrayal “will inevitably affect the mental health of children and young people,” says the study.

Some psychologists have suggested that helping worried young people take meaningful action to address the climate crisis – from attending demonstrations to eating less meat – can reduce feelings of helplessness and protect their mental health.

But Hickman argues that “just acting sustainably is not enough to cure ecological anxiety.” According to the psychotherapist it is a “simplified solution”, which does not address the real problem, which is the need for governments to act quickly.

Neubauer expects that in the long term these pressures on young people may make some of them even more committed, but lead many others to disengage. “It’s easy to lose faith in the state and politics these days, because they are failing us,” he says. “But it is also easy to end up totally disinterested, to tell oneself that the situation is so difficult that it is impossible to face it, to stop wanting to be informed. We will see people who want to escape from the crisis and the inertia with which it is faced ”, he predicts.

Young activists, from Portugal to Colombia, via the United States, are at the origin of an increasing number of petitions and lawsuits calling for faster action on climate change, usually for reasons related to the defense of the human rights.

Last year, for example, six Portuguese children and young adults asked the European Court of Human Rights to order 33 countries to make stronger cuts in CO2 emissions, explaining that inadequate responses by governments endanger their future.

Neubauer herself was the main plaintiff in a well-known lawsuit, which in April in Germany pushed the constitutional court to declare the country’s climate plan “incompatible with fundamental rights”, forcing the government to increase emissions cuts. “The court surprised us by truly embracing our cause and saying that not acting today will damage the freedom and security of tomorrow,” two elements guaranteed by the constitution.

According to Hickman, more generally “psychological distress could be considered a violation of human rights. Our results show us that there is moral damage for children and young people ”.

What will really make a difference will be to push many more people to view the climate crisis as a matter of concern to them and actually force governments to change, Neubauer says. “We need to put more pressure. More adults need to understand that this is also their problem. Which is for everyone “.

Right now the idea that young people alone can somehow “solve” the climate crisis is a heavy burden to bear. “We won’t be the ones to solve it. We are doing all we can, but it will not be enough. We need everyone ”.

Hickman agrees that increasing pressure on governments and other institutions that have the power to take real action against the climate crisis is the easiest way to lower the pressure on the mental health of children and adolescents.

“We want to reduce ecological anxiety among young people and children, making it grow among ministers,” he says. “We have to say to governments: ‘Where is your conscience?'”.

(Translation by Federico Ferrone)