'Eco-Anxiety' and Young People's Mental Health
December 19, 2023
Starting on the 30th of November and running through to December 12th the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly referred to as COP28 was completed. This annual conference is a meeting between world leaders where they address climate change, aiming to put the world on a path towards a more sustainable future.
The conference itself came at a time of very drastic and extreme changes to the global climate. It is often poorer countries that are affected most significantly by climate change, and in those less impacted countries it has become less easy to ignore or avoid the presence of climate change in our daily lives, or to just take this continued change as the ‘new normal’. Because of this, we are now seeing a significant impact on our mental health, especially the mental health of young people. The presence of wildfires in California and Greece, floods in Pakistan and Italy, and drastic changes to hot weather in the usually mild UK have taken the spotlight on national and international news.
How climate change is affecting our mental health
Whilst there has been an increase in the extremity and destruction of climate change, there has been an increase in people’s worries and anxieties about the effects of climate change too. Research by the NHS published in 2023 has shown that ‘just over half (54.8%) of young people aged 17 to 25 years reported being worried about the impact of climate change’. This research was done into the mental health experiences of young people in the UK specifically. Other research by The Lancet from 2021 has explored this question more widely, surveying young people across 10 countries in total. They found that young people in countries such as the Philippines, India and Brazil were more likely to be ‘extremely worried’ about climate change, compared to young people in the UK and USA who were still showing anxieties around climate change but were less likely to be ‘extremely worried’.
This difference in the severity of worry is in part because countries in the ‘Global South’ (such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan) have been experiencing more harsh and destructive effects of climate change compared to wealthier countries, such as the USA, where those higher worries are less extreme in comparison. With all this in mind, however, we are seeing more and more young people coming together to tackle climate change. From school strikes started by Greta Thunberg to protest governments’ action on the environment, to activists like Leah Namugerwa who has planted over 200 trees in Uganda or Tashin Uddin in Bangladesh inspiring young people and promoting cycling as an alternative to cars young people have been coming together to create lasting change.
This is important to remember for young people worried about climate change - that these worries aren’t something to bear alone. Reminding yourself of that can be very useful, as it is very easy to suffer through anxieties alone, which can increase and worsen the effects of anxiety and loneliness. Finding ways to engage with nature will have a great impact on well-being, and doing so together can be a great help not only to reducing the effects of isolation on our mental health but of course helping the environment too by joining in things like group litter picking or conservation projects.
If you find that you aren’t able to cope well with your anxieties or worries, Mindsum has dedicated therapists who will work with you to get the support you need.