30 years ago, even less, a couple of decades, the news about climate change reached us with drops and seemed far away, as far away as the poles, where icebergs melted at the foot of their white bears. In recent years, however, we turn on the television, the radio, read a newspaper or open social networks and the catastrophic messages about the climate crisis follow one another: heat waves, droughts, floods, fires, uncontrolled CO2 emissions...
Beyond generating concern, the effects of climate change can lead us to eco-anxiety, the chronic fear of suffering a cataclysm considering the devastation that the environment is suffering. To talk about its psychological consequences, this Friday a round table was held in Barcelona as part of the La Vanguardia Talks series of meetings.
According to a survey published in 'The Lancet' in which 10,000 people from 10 different countries and ages between 16 and 25 participated, 45% of those surveyed stated that concern about the climate negatively affected their daily lives. ; three quarters said that "the future is terrifying", and 56% said that "humanity is doomed".
For the expert journalist on climate change, Irene Baños, who is one of the European voices calling for attention on eco-anxiety, the role of the media is essential to mitigate its effects, since "they only report catastrophic news on time, but they do not provide tools to the problem and that generates a paralyzing fear. We need a journalism of solutions, constructive; We still have time to reverse the situation.”
But politicians must also, according to the author of the book 'Ecoansias', take urgent and real measures, "since one of the direct causes of eco-anxiety in young people is contemplating government inactivity." According to the expert, even if the climate crisis is not going to be solved tomorrow, "seeing that you have a government that supports you relieves you."
"Anxiety can be adaptive, which leads us to seek solutions, which is what the majority of the Spanish population has, according to a study carried out with more than 1,000 people," explains the environmental psychologist and professor of psychology at the University from Zaragoza, Silvia Collado. "The problem is when anxiety reaches high levels: then frustration and discomfort come and this paralyzes us."
How to distinguish concern for the environment from eco-anxiety? “If I am worried and aware and I want to find solutions, that is not eco-anxiety. Yes, it is suffering from constant nervousness, with intrusive thoughts about climate change in every action we carry out in our day to day, such as going to the supermarket and not buying anything because the packaging is not sustainable or not going to eat in restaurants because we don't know where the products come from and feel a lot of discomfort”, he adds.
When anxiety is unhealthy, you have to ask for help from a specialist. “This usually happens to young people who want to fight for a better world and see that they don't reach it. Then they go into panic disorders, phobias, obsessions and sometimes depression. And each time, the patients are younger, because now adolescence begins earlier, at 11 years old”, points out the psychiatrist Jordi Domingo, medical director of the Institut Nepp, specializing in the treatment of mental illnesses in children and adolescents. "Before giving drugs to patients, we always refer them to psychology group therapies."
One of the keys to overcoming or mitigating eco-anxiety is, for Silvia Collado, accepting that, individually, we cannot change the world, and lowering our expectations: "we must understand that change has to be something collective and that I can contribute with actions such as voting for certain political parties that include measures on the environment in their programs or join groups with the same concerns, where, in addition, the actions will be more visible than individually”.
“In the end you must realize that eco-anxiety is robbing you of the opportunity to carry out actions within that community that Silvia was talking about. And realize that it is better to act than to continue suffering in extremes. Eco-anxiety can be a great ally that drives us to action”, Irene Baños qualifies.
“It is about finding our red line of eco-anxiety, that anxiety that moves us to act, because below it we would not do anything to improve”, confirms Jordi Domingo.
For Baños, one of the most immediate solutions to eco-anxiety is independent journalism and information; for Collado in the investment in university education in environmental education programs and for Domingo in more education in the school stage and in promoting respect for the world that surrounds us among the youngest. "And it is necessary to connect children with that world, with the natural environment, to understand how our actions influence nature and also to awaken that good eco-anxiety, the ones that move us," adds Collado.
Now, more than ever, it seems that we should put planting a tree in the first place of the tasks to be accomplished in the lives of our children. Writing a book and having children can wait.c
