- Climate anxiety, ecological anxiety, eco-anxiety, or environmental anxiety are umbrella terms used to describe a spectrum of mental and emotional responses to the effects of climate change.
- Experts say that to understand the mental health ramifications of climate change in India, a clear distinction between the experiences of urban and rural populations is needed.
- Women, youth and members of marginalised communities and those who live close to nature suffer most from disruptions to their mental well-being, linked to ecological degradation.
While conducting a survey after the Kerala floods, volunteer Maneeja Murali, met a teenage flood survivor with autism, who exhibited signs of trauma. “Her mother confided that the girl was frightened of the rain after the floods and refused to step outside when it rained. We observed that she was often anxious, which persisted even a couple of years after the disaster,” recounts Maneeja, now a senior programme officer at ATREE. Maneeja was part of the needs assessment that followed the Kerala floods in 2018 and 2019, conducted by the Kerala State Disaster Management in collaboration with UNICEF in 2021.
Around the same time, Maya Gurung, a former Everest climber-turned-politician from the climate-fragile Sindhupalchowk district of Nepal, encountered women in shelters after the 2021 Melamchi flood disaster, which left many people in the region homeless. Gurung shares, “I met a young woman with a toddler who told me she held her child tightly at night, fearing that another flood could strike in the wee hours and take her child away”.
The narratives shared by climate disaster survivors underscore the increasingly acknowledged mental health ramifications of extreme weather events.
What is climate or eco-anxiety?
As climate change manifests across geographies, humanity grapples with the challenge of adaptation. The American Psychiatric Association recognises climate change as one of the foremost threats to global health in the 21st century.
Escalating temperatures and the proliferation of extreme weather phenomena such as heat waves, floods and droughts can directly and indirectly contribute to various physical and mental health disorders. Terms like climate anxiety, ecological anxiety, eco-anxiety, or environmental anxiety are used to describe the mental and emotional responses to climate change. These umbrella terms encompass a spectrum of mental states ranging from mental health conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), acute anxiety, clinical depression and suicidal ideation to distressing emotions such as grief, fear, worry, and a longing for a past era characterised by pristine climate, a sentiment often referred to as solastalgia.
The American Psychological Association defines eco-anxiety as a “chronic fear of environmental doom”. Australian environmental philosopher and sustainability professor Glenn Albrecht categorises it as a form of “psychoterratic illness” which is a mental ailment related to the earth where individuals’ mental well-being is jeopardised by the disruption of “healthy” connections between themselves and their environment. Lise Van Susteren, an American psychiatrist specialising in the psychological impacts of climate change, views eco-anxiety as a type of “pre-traumatic stress disorder”, where traumatic consequences are anticipated and felt before the event occurs, “manifesting in symptoms such as flash-forwards, fear-induced dissociation, and nightmares”.
Associate professor of applied psychology at the University of Mumbai Vivek Belhekar describes mental health disorders as a complex interplay of multiple factors. “There is no one cause to it. There are predisposing effects, maintaining factors and stressors that contribute to a mental health condition,” he says. Climate change acts as either a maintaining factor or a stressor and is never the only cause, he adds. For instance, he elaborates that one’s innate sensitivity could be a predisposing effect to conditions like depression or anxiety; climate change acts as either a factor that maintains this condition or a stressor that exacerbates it.
Climate anxiety is not recognised as a mental disorder in the diagnostic and statistical manual (DSM) of mental illnesses, the American Psychiatric Association’s professional reference book on mental health and brain-related conditions. Some experts, such as Dr. Lise Van Susteren are pushing to insert climate-related stressor somewhere in the DSM, as per a report, since she “supports legitimising climate anxiety as a separate condition that affects people as a way to validate what they are going through”. There are indications that people react both positively and negatively to climate stressors; while some may plunge into despair, others utilise it to engage in more proactive measures like voluntary work or climate action.
Read more: Six years on, cyclone Ockhi survivors battle lingering mental health impacts
Violence, bereavement and grief
Weather, seasons and other climate-related phenomena can aggravate symptoms in those already experiencing mental health disorders. Studies have shown the correlation between increased temperature and aggravated manic-depressive states in people with bipolar disorder. The study observed a link between manic states and higher mean daily temperatures. One of the conclusions was that the disturbance in the circadian rhythm of those with bipolar disorder manifested as sleep deprivation could aggravate the pre-existing condition. Kerala-based psychiatrist Dr. Dinesh R.S. says that he gets more cases of manic episodes among people with bipolar in peak summer months. Some studies also point to a surge in aggressive behaviour and violence with the increase in ambient temperature.
Among rural, less privileged communities, displacement, migrations, breakdown of community infrastructure, food scarcity, loss of employment, and poor sense of social support – which are some of the outcomes of a climate-related disaster – have been found to have serious consequences for mental health. Dinesh says he has witnessed communities experiencing bereavement collectively after landslides and loss of lives during the 2019 floods in Kerala. Following the Kosi river floods in Bihar, he has interacted with survivors and bereaving family members immersed themselves in voluntary rescue work as a coping mechanism.
Read more: Tiger widows of Sundarbans: Navigating ecology, beliefs and mental health
The urban-rural divide
Climate anxiety, with its evolving definition, has been recognised within both urban and rural populations. In rural communities, however, it often remains concealed beneath layers of more conspicuous issues such as economic and livelihood loss, as well as marginalisation based on caste and class.
Belhekar emphasises the importance of distinguishing how urban and rural India experience climate-related mental health problems. Based on his studies and observations in climate vulnerable regions in both urban and rural India, Belhekar notes that urbanites’ relationship with nature tends to be more utilitarian. In urban areas, climate distress often arises from a sense of nostalgia for a bygone era of environmental comfort, coupled with the tangible loss of that comfort in the face of climate change. “What we often see is the worry that, due to temperature rise or excessive rains, they have been inconvenienced; the services they have been enjoying are either not available or have become more expensive. The distress is not connected to loss of life or livelihood which is often the case among communities that depend on nature for a living,” he elaborates.
Referring to climate-related trauma experienced by rural communities who live close to forested areas, Belhekar highlights the case of Chandrapur, a village in the periphery of the Tadoba tiger reserve in Maharashtra. Here, the tribal residents face severe trauma and unresolved grief due to the dangers inherent in their daily livelihood activities, such as collecting firewood, which can result in fatal encounters with wild animals. Belhekar explains that when a family member fails to return from such routine tasks, it often plunges the family into a state of profound trauma and grief. In cases pertaining to agrarian communities, there is a sense of injustice from nature when they repeatedly face crop loss and economic doom in the aftermath of extreme weather events.
Who is affected by it?
“Gen Z worries in the Global North and suffers in the Global South,” proclaims a study from Greece that analysed eco-anxiety among the youth globally. Research from Western countries indicates people born between 1995 and 2010, referred to as Gen Z, are particularly susceptible to the mental toll of climate stressors. Born into an era defined by extreme climate crises, they have begun to be recognised as “the climate generation”.
A 2021 global survey involving 10,000 youth from different countries between the age of 16 and 25 found India’s youth to be one of the worst affected emotionally by climate change. Belhekar, however, believes that the youth are armed with resilience which dissipates as they age. “Women, especially from the rural parts of India, are the worst affected by climate change and mental health issues that stem from it,” he highlights. This is corroborated by a report that says women are more susceptible to suffer from food insecurity, partner violence, and poor health from climate change than men. From his experience of interacting with women of Chandrapur and those from the coastal regions of India, Behlekar has understood that women who lose their partners to climate-related negative events often face social marginalisation.
Marginalised communities, such as transgender individuals and LGBTQ groups, suffer disproportionately during the recovery after extreme weather events. For instance, Maneeja recounts interacting with a group of transgenders forced to seek refuge in hiding after being compelled to leave relief camps during the devastating Kerala floods due to sexual harassment by other occupants.
Indeed, global warming and climate change serve as great levellers, impacting everyone to some extent, regardless of their power or status. During a round table organised by the Kerala-based non-profit Sustera Foundation to address mental health concerns related to climate change, K.K. Shailaja, the former health minister of the state, who oversaw the ministry during the Kerala floods and the Covid-19 pandemic, alluded to her developing diabetes with stress from her responsibilities acting as a catalyst.
Despite the immense pressure, she felt compelled to conceal her stress in order to project strength and resilience to the public during crises. She told the audience: “If I get tensed, the whole state will get tensed. They would think even the minister is scared so we can’t survive it (the crisis). So, I had to hide the tension. People asked me how I could smile in front of the media in the midst of a crisis. I try to keep my mind free while talking to them to make them feel like we can handle the crisis.”
Read more: Mental well-being takes a hit post cyclone Fani
Banner image: Australian youth at a climate protest in Melbourne. Studies show the youth across the globe is either worrying about or suffering from climate change. Photo by Takver/Wikimedia Commons.
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