SThey refuse to have children, convinced that they are close to the moment of humanity’s extinction. And they suffer at the prospect of the threatened environmental disaster and the extreme climate events that are increasingly occurring. Even Google Trends data – which takes into account the most searched terms on the web – indicates a drastic increase in the word “ecoanxiety” in searches.
So is it legitimate to consider the climate crisis also the cause of mental suffering? Concern about the impact of environmental damage on humanity especially affects the very young of Generation Z, activists and scientists. However, there is still little interest among psychologists and psychiatrists in mental health related to climate change.
Does ecoanxiety really exist?
Because, the psychiatrist and anthropologist Paolo Cianconi explains: «It is new and challenging research because climate change often occurs gradually and on a large scale, while changes in mental health can be difficult to detect as they are influenced by a network of dynamics. biopsychosocial. Faced with such epochal transitions, however, we cannot be passive observers». For this reason, together with Luigi Janiri, university professor of psychiatry, he wrote Climate change and mental healthpublished by Raffaello Cortina which gives tools to better understand the phenomenon and indicates therapeutic ways.
Feeling fragile
Cianconi and Janiri analyze the phase of instability and climatic transformation that favors the onset of new psychoterratic syndromes (i.e. due to having severed a healthy bond between oneself and nature). The list is long, let’s go from eco-guilt and eco-shamethe sense of guilt or shame for having behaved in a way that is harmful to the environment (emotions which, the authors write, motivate us to act more respectfully for the planet), to the chronic fear of environmental disaster, that eco-anxiety, a term coined in 2017 by the American Psychological Association which is characterized by frustration, feeling of helplessness, desperation and manifests itself with clinically relevant symptoms such as worry, brooding, sleep disorders, appetite disorders, panic attacks. «Global crises overlap with individual fragilities – explains Cianconi, making people insecure and unprepared for climatic events that reveal a shortage of resources and means of subsistence. There is thus an increase in stress, mental distress and relational difficulties.”
Activists of the Extinction Rebellion group during a week of actions in Venice (Federico Tisa)
Dynamic psychotherapy
How to manage mental discomfort related to these issues? The authors refer to psychotherapy models (called dynamic) that they have been experimenting with for some time and which strengthen the ability to draw on personal resources, to seek support in a social network and in one’s own creativity, to reconnect with the world of dreams and emotions . Cianconi therefore clarifies: «Ecoparalysis, due to “excessive” awareness of the problem, must be avoided, learning to manage fear, a natural response to climate change, directing it towards action. Indignation must be converted into mental energy that fuels civil commitment.”
This is the path experienced by Carola Farci, a teacher of literature in a high school in Cagliari, who made waste collection its mission for a more sustainable world. “When I see catastrophe on the horizon, I feel like I’m suffocating”: this is how the 33-year-old explains what she feels when eco-anxiety takes over. To prevent it from becoming a pathological disorder, she took a sabbatical and, with her octopus-shaped car and her dog Polly, she embarked on a journey to clean up the beaches and seabeds of Europe. Seven months, 11 countries, over three tons of waste: «The situation is alarming: open-air landfills and separate waste collection still not widespread» she says. With the recovered recyclable objects, she organized an auction that allowed her to plant six thousand trees in poor countries. With the rights to his book Plastichiadsin which he talks about his green adventures, supports reforestation in Italy.
Giving up on becoming a mother
Carola Farci’s commitment – also narrated in the Wonder Women series produced by We World – is daily: she promotes environmental education at school, writes sustainability projects, raises awareness among her followers on the profile @ecoprof.travel. «Only by helping to contain the ecological disaster can I keep anxiety at bay» she confesses. But the conditioning regarding the future remains heavy. «I have decided not to have children. I cannot entrust a new life to this catastrophic world» he adds.
Sara Nicomedi, a 39-year-old photographer, agrees and included this decision in photographic project Extinction, in which he analyzes the relationship between past and present, current actions and impact on future generations. «Giving up on becoming a mother is a protest against those who hold power and do not act to save the planet» she states, recalling the moment when, having just moved to London, she was pervaded by eco-anxiety. Born in Rome, but raised in the village of Manziana, she says: «In England, between junk food and pollution, I tried to preserve my habits by going to the park by bike, not buying online and involving my roommates in sustainable actions such as saving energy and water or not buying products packaged in plastic, but it was hard.”
What gives rise to the first symptoms, including chronic sadness, insomnia and catastrophic dreams, it was the ultimatum “We only have 12 years to stem a catastrophe”. «No one around me understood the urgency» she continues. With photography she managed to tame the discomfort. «I took to the streets with the activists of Extinction Rebellion, I joined the Birthstriker movement, made up of women who, like me, have decided not to have children until they see a concrete intervention from the institutions» she explains, while the photographic project has become traveling exhibition of self-portraits, collages of photos of grandmothers, documentary images. She recently returned to her town, where she enjoys healthy air and 0 km food. «I feel less alone and committed to supporting a cause on which our future depends. I am worried, but not resigned” she concludes, reiterating, in unison with Farci and Cianconi, how “difficult it is to make painful decisions, while those who should guarantee protections make deals on our future”.
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