WORRY ABOUT CLIMATE
CHANGE IS SO COMMON,
IT’S SPARKED A NEW
MENTAL-HEALTH EPIDEMIC:
ECOLOGICAL GRIEF. BUT
THERE ARE T WO GROUPS
OF PEOPLE PROVING HOPE
IS ANOTHER OPTIONSUMMER 2019: Massive fires race across Tasmania,
destroying thousands of hectares of majestic Huon Valley
forest. Record-breaking rains flood Townsville, with lethal
bacteria in the water contributing to the death toll. A tiny rodent
from Bramble Cay in the Torres Strait becomes the first-known
mammal driven to extinction by human-induced climate
change. And that’s just in our own backyard.
We’re living in a time of serious uncertainty. Our feeds are
overflowing with doomsday prophecies: pictures of starving
polar bears, terrifying clips from climate change activists, stats
that tell us the past five years were the hottest ever recorded. It’s
information overload, forcing the message on us over and over
until we feel powerless to help. Even when the news is good, it’s
overwhelming. Footage from climate change rallies gives the
sense we should be doing more. Cries for action from young
activists like Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish girl who
started the global school strike for climate action movement,
clang against the denial of governments.
We’re working through emotions such as denial, anger,
bargaining, depression, fear, angst, regret, hopelessness.
Sounds like a kind of mourning, right?
Actually, so many people are feeling this
way that there’s now a psychological term for
it: ecological grief. It’s the sensation of losing
something important – or knowing we might
- because of climate change.
Dr Susie Burke is a senior psychologist from
Melbourne with a focus on environment and
disaster response. “Regardless of the cause,”
she says, “those mental health conditions are
painful and distressing and difficult for people
to manage. The feelings are real. Is it rational
for people to be feeling that intensity of
emotions in response to the vicarious threat of
climate change? Yes, it is very rational.”
In her practice, Dr Burke is increasingly seeing patients
for ecological grief. “People are coming to see me who
are either working in the environmental field or are very
environmentally aware and trying to live sustainably and
responsibly, with the leading issue being their really deep
distress about climate change. And it sometimes comes up as
moderate-to-severe depression.”
She says every kind of grief is legitimate, from what’s felt by
families ripped apart by disaster to those of us who are fearful and
concerned from a distance. “We can be confident that there’s
going to be an increasing mental health impact for affected
communities,” she says. “There are also psychosocial impacts –
things like increasing stress, relationship problems, problems at
work, marital problems, children’s behavioural problems.”
Resentment, fury, misery, listlessness and bingeing on Netflix
in our jammies are all valid responses to watching the world
disintegrate around us. “Those who are aware of just how much
the very system that we love needs to change, and will be forced
to change, can experience the existential threat of climate
change,” says Dr Burke. So how can we push through?
To find out, I asked one of my oldest friends, marine
microbiologist Dr Stacy Deppeler. She’s spent almost a decade
studying some of the smallest victims of our changing environment:
phytoplankton in Antarctic sea ice. She’s seen the impact first-
hand, spending months of 24-hour-daylight immersed in research,
and she says the messages the public gets are not quite the full
story. “It’s easy to feel discouraged when we see so much bad
news about climate change in the media,” she tells me. “What
isn’t shown is the mammoth amount of work being done every day
by scientists around the world. There are thousands [of people]
working tirelessly on climate change research every single day.” >“IS IT R ATIONAL TO BE
FEELING THAT INTENSITY
OF EMOTIONS IN
RESPONSE TO CLIMATE
CHANGE? YES”
BY ANNA SPARGO-RYAN#ELLEFUTUREISNOW