One would think that the very idea of waking up every morning feeling the tension would not be so severe, except it isn’t from a personal crisis: it could be wildfires burning on another continent, warnings of flooding in a city the person has never visited, or a news report on species extinction. The number of people who experience this is not a passing fancy for millions of people around the world. It’s just a fact of life.
Hickman et al. (2021) conducted a survey of 10,000 young people globally in 10 countries in 2021 and found that 68% were sad, afraid or anxious about climate change and over half felt it impacted their daily lives. This is now referred to as ‘eco-anxiety’ by scientists and professionals in the mental health field. It’s kind of like being on the street and having a vague sense of unease in an increasingly dangerous world.
However, “eco-anxiety” is not a “mental state of anxiety”. Studies reveal that it has physical effects on the brain’s response to stress. This article discusses the nature of eco-anxiety, how it impacts a small but significant region of the brain known as the amygdala, and why these are important for mental and physical well-being.
What Is Eco-Anxiety?
Eco-anxiety is defined as a “chronic fear of environmental doom” (Clayton et al., 2017, p. 7, my emphasis) by the American Psychological Association (APA). Eco-anxiety is different from typical anxiety, which can come and go, but is a more persistent worry connected with actual events, such as climate catastrophes, greater temperature increases, and biodiversity losses, which do not simply cease occurring.
It is important to know a little about the workings of the brain under stress to understand why this is different to the everyday stress. The amygdala is a small brain structure in the middle of the stress response. Imagine the amygdala is a telephone that rings out an alarm. The amygdala triggers an alarm in the event of a threat, such as a fast-moving car or a scary news report. The heart races, the palms sweat, and the muscles tighten. This is the body’s way of reacting to a threat or fleeing to safety, otherwise known as the “fight-or-flight” response.
This is a great answer to give for people who are actually at risk and are in real danger. The issue is that the amygdala is not as good at distinguishing between a real physical threat and a slowly unfolding, abstract threat, such as climate change. If climate information and images continue to be a constant reminder of this alarm, the amygdala becomes activated almost on a daily basis in a low-level state. It never gets the message that the threat is over, as, in the climate change world, it is not.
Studies with brain imaging have revealed changes in the amygdala among individuals who have been subjected to chronic stress. It can be more reactive, more voluminous or more linked to other regions of the brain that process fear (McEwen, 2007). This means that over time, the brain alters its physical structure around fear.
Read More: Eco-Anxiety: The Psychological Strain of Climate Change
How Climate News keeps the Brain’s Alarm On
The contemporary media landscape has been a big contributor to the development of eco-anxiety. The news feeds, social media timelines and documentary content provide a constant and steady flow of information for climate change. A lot of these tales feature destruction, such as flooded properties, burning forests, and dying coral reefs. All of these evoke a little stress response.
This is referred to in Psychology as “secondary traumatic stress”. It is the emotional and physiological reactions to repeated exposure to “distressful events”, even if one is not directly involved in the events (Figley, 1995). With climate change, this exposure is global, ongoing, and evident to no end. Whereas a fire alarm will stop sounding when the fire is put out, there is no “all clear” sound in climate news.
When Stress Becomes a Constant Background Noise
Chronic low-level hyper-arousal is an important part of this. A state in which the body’s stress system is activated at a low, but sustained, level. Say that the car engine is left on constantly when not driving. This causes the engine to deteriorate over time. Chronic Hyper-arousal in the human body has similar impacts. It increases the baseline level of the stress hormone cortisol, interferes with sleep, compromises the immune system and may cause what some people refer to as “burnout”, which is complete mental and physical exhaustion (Maslach & Leiter, 2016).
Making this extra challenging is a psychological phenomenon known as “learned helplessness. If they are continually faced with a threat about which they have no control, they eventually cease to attempt to cope with it. Helplessness is another signal of danger to the brain, and thus even more activates the amygdala. This forms a vicious circle that is difficult to escape from if it is not deliberately broken. According to the research, the body experiences physical effects from eco-anxiety. Mental stress isn’t the only kind of stress. The amygdala fires every time and releases a chain of bodily responses, impacting almost all bodily systems. If this occurs on a regular basis over months and years, it does add up.
Cortisol is the stress hormone that is a key player in this process. It is released by the adrenal glands (small glands located above the kidneys) in response to stress to the brain. Cortisol is beneficial at times of stress in small doses. It is a way to focus and gives one the strength to react to a threat. However, a prolonged increase in cortisol for weeks or months can start to cause damage to the body. Chronically elevated cortisol appears to be associated with high blood pressure, weight gain, blood sugar dysfunction, and decreased immune functioning (Sapolsky, 2004).
The demographics of the people who are most at risk
Not all people are equally impacted by eco-anxiety. Some groups are affected more than others, and it is crucial to consider solutions when aware of this. Climate anxiety is consistently reported as being highest amongst young people, especially those aged 16-25, globally in surveys (Hickman et al., 2021). This is logical for several reasons. They stand to experience a greater share of the impacts of climate change than their older counterparts. They are in a phase of life where there is a heightened significance of the future, and a destabilisation of that future is particularly threatening. The amygdalae of young people, in particular, are very sensitive to chronic stress during development, and thus, chronic stress during adolescence and early adulthood can have enduring consequences on stress regulation (Casey et al., 2008).
Read More: Understanding Eco-Anxiety in Youth
When Climate Anxiety Becomes Climate Grief
Researchers describe what communities in the Global South, Indigenous populations, low-income communities and farming communities living in climate-vulnerable areas, such as small island states affected by sea-level rise or farming communities affected by extended dry seasons, experience as “climate grief”, the grief of losing landscapes, livelihoods, and ways of life. Eco-anxiety is a reality for these populations. It is associated with real and tangible losses.
Eco-anxiety is now starting to be acknowledged as a clinical need at the public health level by mental health professionals. In 2017, the APA officially recognised the impact of climate change on mental health and has since issued an advocacy call to include psychological support in climate adaptation policy (Clayton et al., 2017). Mental health has also been identified as a critical dimension of the health effects of climate change by the World Health Organisation.
The implication is very important. Climate change is a neurological and psychological crisis as well as an environmental and economic crisis. The impact on the brain’s stress systems has tangible effects on the lives of hundreds of millions of people, their daily functioning, their feelings and their interactions with one another.
Soothing the Fears
With all the evidence of the way in which eco-anxiety can become lodged in the brain’s stress system, one might wonder what can help? The happy news is that there are several ways that research indicates can be effective, albeit by altering the relationship with climate change rather than denying it.
The method that has the most evidence is taking action. Research has been conducted globally and across various countries, with consistently similar findings, that people who take climate-related action, such as large-scale advocacy or small day-to-day actions, have reduced anxiety and increased a sense of agency (Ojala et al., 2021). This makes neurological sense. When the brain feels a sense of action is taking place in response to the threat, the amygdala slows down. The biological aspect of action is that, to some extent, the situation is not hopeless.
Read More: How does Climate Change affect Mental Health?
From Individual Action to Collective Resilience
Community and social connections are other potent buffers as well. Isolation amplifies fear. The brain’s social bonding systems are engaged when a person connects with others about their issues, whether in a community garden or environmental group or through an online support network, which helps control the alarm system in the amygdala (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008).
Over time, mindfulness-based practices such as meditation, body-scan exercises and conscious breathing have been demonstrated to decrease activity in the amygdala and decrease cortisol levels (Holzel et al., 2011). They are not making climate change fiction, but they are providing the nervous system with a way to deal with fear without getting “stuck” in it.
There has also been a growing number of mental health providers that are providing “climate-aware therapy”. It comprises therapeutic strategies that specifically target eco anxiety, acknowledge its grounding in the real world, and assist individuals in cultivating resilience without the need to downplay or survive what is occurring in the world. For those looking for such support, there are resources and therapist directories available, such as those from Climate Psychology Alliance.
Researchers also say that the best way to combat the effects of eco-anxiety is for society to take action (as opposed to the individual) and enact actual policy changes. People start to feel less helpless, and helplessness becomes the impulse for the worst neurological effects of eco-anxiety to dissipate when they see governments and institutions treat the climate crisis seriously.
Conclusion
Eco-anxiety is a genuine phenomenon; it has measurable impacts, and it is having a population impact on human brains. The amygdala, which is the internal alarm system, is not meant to live in a world where the threat will never end. With a low level, chronic fear caused by climate change, its impact is felt in moods, memories, physical health and the ability to think straight about the future.
This is not a time to give up. It’s a warning to consider the mental health aspect of this crisis as much as the ecological and economic aspects. Environments must be created, policies and social structures where people can experience and deal with climate fear without being affected by it. The thing that is easiest to remember for people is that eco-anxiety is not their fault. It’s a logical response to an actual condition. Living with it most healthily means not hiding it, but harnessing it, creating community, and caring for oneself and others. The brain that fears the future is the same brain that can make it a reality.
References +
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