Mother Earth and Her Anxious Children

What is Climate Anxiety?

You’ve been studying for finals all day and finally decided that it is time to take a break, maybe go on TikTok for a bit, forget about the impending doom of stress that is about to take over. As you scroll expecting to find entertainment, you see a video of one of the scientists who was part of the worldwide climate change protests after the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s news report. Instead of taking your mind off of exams, you find yourself even more stressed, wondering whether your passions are even worth pursuing if there is going to be no world in which you can experience the fruits of your hard work. Is it all pointless? 

All extreme weather conditions caused by climate change may induce anxiety and other trauma responses [1]. Since climate change is an ongoing global issue, anticipating adverse consequences is expected. While it is natural to anticipate disasters, as climate change continues to globalize, the stress cultivated by constant worrying can negatively impact psychological functioning [2]. The collective realization of climate disasters through various news sources can lead to the decline of one’s mental health, even in those who are not directly affected [2]. Climate disasters have the potential to shake the sense of stability in an individual’s life, leading to a rise of fear and anxiety [3]. Additionally, the lack of self regulated stability, which humans usually  rely for and expect from the natural world, is directly caused by human activity, creating a sense of distrust between humans and nature. This mindset is incredibly damaging for mental health, since humans innately comprehend themselves to be within the chain of balance in the natural world, which has now been disrupted by climate change [4]. Therefore, the emerging observations of various emotional responses to climate change are most often referred to as “climate anxiety” [2]. This term encompasses the psychological effects of climate change on mental illness and shows how unnatural changes in the natural world cause unnatural changes in human minds and bodies.

What is Climate Change and Mental Health ?

Since the start of the industrial revolution several human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels, have released greenhouse gasses into the earth’s atmosphere and are essentially trapped there [5]. Due to their unique heat absorbing qualities, these gasses contribute to the warming temperatures of the planet, leading to climate change [6], the continuous change in the usual weather patterns around the globe [7]. Key indicators of climate change are the increase of ocean and global temperatures, rising sea levels, and extreme weather conditions such as hurricanes, floods, and wildfires [8]. According to climate researchers in the European Union, the last decade held the warmest temperatures, with the global temperature averaging more than 1.1°C compared to the pre-industrial revolution [9]. Since the average global surface temperature has significantly increased due to human activity, scientists also use the term global warming to describe the phenomenon. In regard to global temperatures, small alterations can lead to chains of unpredictable events to unravel and destabilize the harmonious balance of our planet [7]. This loss of balance affects humans no less than the nature they are interconnected with. Although the most obvious social effects of climate change are political conflicts and economic instability, it is important to address the increase in emotional vulnerability, as seen in the rise of anxiety in the population [2].

Climate change impacts the population in several direct and indirect ways. When a population is directly affected by the outcomes of the changing climate, its residents experience extreme environmental stressors, which destroy the environment that contributed to the formation of their identity. When places, objects, and ideas associated with the stability, sentimental value, and emotional connections of others are destroyed, people start to encode fear and anxiety over their sense of stability [2]. The disruptions caused by the effects of climate change often target people with low socioeconomic status, who are likely to be more vulnerable to anxiety and other mood disorders following the experience of a natural disaster [10]. For example, victims of climate stressors have displayed exacerbation of prior diagnosed mental illnesses, as well as the formation of new ones, such as acute and posttraumatic stress disorder, major depression, drug and alcohol abuse, higher rate of suicide, etc. [11]. 

The indirect effects of climate change, such as climate anxiety, are experienced through the consumption of various forms of media that depicts how others are directly affected by climate change. This can also have a degrading effect on mental health because negative experiences of others can lead to an increase of one’s fear of potential vulnerability to similar situations [12].Through the media, people learn about what is going on in the world and empathize with those affected by trauma [13]. Therefore, media intake of environmental degradation often has negative effects on the observers who are experiencing vicarious trauma [2]. Some symptoms that follow intense feelings of climate anxiety are panic attacks, loss of appetite, irritability, weakness, and sleeplessness [11]. These indicators are a direct result of the direct impact climate change has on the global population.

Climate change has an accumulative effect, meaning that the consequences of past actions that lead to the modern climate crisis are left for the current generation. Therefore, it is not surprising that young people are more likely to experience a negative outcome of a century of human-induced climate change during pivotal points of their development [14]. One study suggests that in order to decrease carbon emissions to acceptable levels, children of the current generation have to emit eight times less CO2 than their grandparents [15]. In a survey study of 10,000, 16-25 year old participants from different countries across the globe, 60% reported feeling “very worried” or “extremely worried” about climate change [16]. When asked about the emotions that climate change induces, the participants responded with words like ‘sad’, ‘afraid’, ‘anxious’, ‘angry’ and ‘powerless’ [16]. These descriptions coincide with the symptoms of anxiety disorders since feelings of nervousness and consistent worrying are some of the first indicators of anxiety [17]. According to the American Psychological Association, anxiety is an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts and physiological changes like increased blood pressure [18]. So how do we observe the prolonged psychological distress caused by climate change contributing to the development of mental health decline?

Neuroscience of Climate Anxiety

The perspective of the enviro-neuroscientific approach is emerging with the help of cognitive neuroscience [19]. Psychological distress is accompanied by the dysregulation of standard emotional processes [20]. The bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST), often explained as the extended amygdala, is responsible for networking stress responses and the extended duration of fear states and social behaviors [21]. Located in the basal forebrain, the BNST activates when a person sees an adverse event occur in images or is expecting an adverse event to happen [22]. This evidence suggests an explanation for why mental health issues occur when a population is affected by climate change indirectly, such as viewing evidence of climate change on social media. In the event of the disruption of networking that BNST provides, the possible pathologies include sustained fear, generalized anxiety disorder, and PTSD [21].

Because the brain is a network of passageways, BNST also accounts for anxiety and the function of the HPA axis. For example, imaging studies on patients with anxiety disorder found an increased volume in their amygdala [23]. The amygdala is the part of the brain responsible for processing and regulating emotions, as well as encoding memories based on the person’s environment [24]. The reason why amygdala is much more widely associated with anxiety, is because it provides cue-based responses of immediate fear factors [21]. Therefore, the study of the amygdala provides examples for populations directly affected by climate change. These findings were also observed in children of young age, providing an example for how the younger generation’s brains are being shaped by adverse experiences [25]. 

Anxiety disorders are often caused by chronic stress, which people in direct effect of climate change often experience [17]. Because the BNST is a networking system which interacts with the amygdala, the amygdala activates the hypothalamic-pituitary-gland (HPA) axis [21]. The HPA axis functions as a mechanism, which is responsible for regulating many physiological processes in case of chronic stressors [26]. Research suggests that stressful life events in early childhood might lead to the dysregulation of the HPA axis, increasing vulnerability to mood and anxiety disorders later in life [27]. This connects to the direct effects of climate change on the younger generation since people who are directly harmed, experience chronic stress before they reach stability once again. 

What Can We Do?

The field of climate anxiety research is limited due to its relative recency in concern [10]. Therefore, it is not always clear why people react to climate change, directly or indirectly. However, one way to relieve the stress caused by climate change, especially for people indirectly affected, is to take action [28]. Something as simple as sharing and informing others with credible information about the issue can make a person feel less alone during times of stress [29]. As shown by research available today, climate change is an issue which needs action from people who have the power to change climate policy and legislation so reaching out and voting for representatives who understand what is happening can be the next step [30]. The psychological, physiological, and neurological disorders rooting from the effects of climate change are vital to understand in order to deal with the consequences of the past. 

References:

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