Therapists Are Reckoning with Eco-anxiety
With no training, counselors feel unequipped to handle the growing number of people anxious about the climate emergency
April 19, 2021
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Andrew Bryant, a therapist based in Tacoma, Washington, felt helpless the first time climate change came up in his office. It was 2016, and a client was agonizing over whether to have a baby. His partner wanted one, but the young man couldn’t stop envisioning this hypothetical child growing up in an apocalyptic, climate-changed world.
Bryant was used to guiding people through their relationship conflicts, anxieties about the future, and life-changing decisions. But this felt different personal. Bryant had long felt concerned about climate change, but in a distant, theoretical way. The patient’s despair faced him with an entirely new reality: that climate change would directly impact his life and the lives of future generations.
Therapists Are Seeing More Patients Struggle With Climate Anxiety
Mental health professionals are developing a new standard of mental health care for our climate-changed world.
Luis Alvarez via Getty Images
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This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.
Andrew Bryant, a therapist based in Tacoma, Washington, felt helpless the first time climate change came up in his office. It was 2016, and a client was agonizing over whether to have a baby. His partner wanted one, but the young man couldn’t stop envisioning this hypothetical child growing up in an apocalyptic, climate-changed world.
Many people stopped doing in-person therapy during lockdown
Credit: Hannah Agosta
There are no tissues on the table, and I’ve forgotten to get a glass of water – because while I’ve previously met my therapist face-to-face in a serene office, successive lockdowns mean that, like everything else, mental health support has largely moved online.
More of us than ever sought out therapy during the past year, with NHS waiting lists lengthening daily, and private psychotherapists fielding a barrage of enquiries. According to a survey by the Royal College of Psychiatrists last May, 43 per cent of its members had seen an ‘alarming’ increase in urgent referrals since the Covid outbreak. And earlier this month, a University of Oxford study found that not only has the pandemic taken a toll on mental health across the board, but that 34 per cent of Covid survivors are at greater risk of anxiety and mood disorders.
People with eating disorders have faced a hellish time during the pandemic, socially isolated and facing reduced services, just when changes in routine have put them at their most vulnerable. The heartbreaking death of former Big Brother contestant Nikki Grahame at the age of 38 has only brought to the fore how many others have been silently suffering.
Grahame had struggled with anorexia nervosa since childhood. Just a week before her death, her mum Sue Grahame spoke of how lockdown restrictions had impacted her daughter’s mental health – from the social isolation to the closure of gyms.
“Last year really put the cap on it,” she told This Morning. “The isolation. it’s been really hard for her. Really hard. She felt very cut off and spending too much time on her own with not enough to think about other than food and that took a grip as well.”
Editor s note: This story originally appeared in Gizmodo and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.
Andrew Bryant, a therapist based in Tacoma, Washington, felt helpless the first time climate change came up in his office. It was 2016, and a client was agonizing over whether to have a baby. His partner wanted one, but the young man couldn t stop envisioning this hypothetical child growing up in an apocalyptic, climate-changed world.
Bryant was used to guiding people through their relationship conflicts, anxieties about the future, and life-changing decisions. But this felt different personal. Bryant had long felt concerned about climate change, but in a distant, theoretical way. The patient s despair faced him with an entirely new reality: that climate change would directly impact his life and the lives of future generations.