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A poll conducted by Opinium for the ethical bank Triodos found alarmingly high numbers of young people are seeking mental health support for environmental and climate anxiety. The survey of 2,000 UK adults, reported in The Times, found that 14 per cent of the population have sought help, however, this figure more than doubles to 29 per cent among 18 to 34-year-olds. In striking contrast, the figure falls to just 3 per cent amongst the 55+ age group.
Commenting on the findings in The Times, Dr Carloline Hickman at the University of Bath said:
We do not want to classify it as a mental illness. It is socially, collectively, politically caused. There is nothing wrong with people worried about climate change.
In a study of over 12,000 people across 32 countries, feelings of climate anxiety was linked to:
Higher exposure to information about climate impacts, was related to greater climate anxiety, but experiencing climate impacts was not. The study found that previous experience of flooding didn’t have a strong relationship to climate anxiety. The researchers suggested that:
“(T)here are important nuances in how people interpret their extreme weather experiences including politically-motivated biased cognition, and the fact that climate change is only one of several interpretive lenses with which people can choose to make sense of their experiences”.
