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Todd Tanner, who hunts and fishes in western Montana and is the founder of the nonprofit organization Conservation Hawks, near Kalispell, Montana. (Noah Throop/The New York Times)
Experts and psychologists are working fast to understand how a volatile and unpredictable world affects our minds and our mental health. In February, a major new study on climate change highlighted its effects on mental health for the first time, warning that climate-related anxiety and stress were likely to increase in years to come.
In addition to those who have lost their homes due to floods and megafires, millions have suffered from historic heat waves. The crisis also wreaks subtle and personal havoc: gardens wither, lake shores shrink, and walks become silent, without the song of the birds that used to set them.
To understand how the effects of climate change are perceived in the United States today, we listened to hundreds of people. In cities already facing the long-term consequences of climate change, and on ranches and pastures decimated by drought, many are trying to cope with the stress of an increasingly precarious future. As temperatures rise, extreme weather events will become more and more common.
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Tonyisha Harris, a young environmental activist, in Chicago. (Noah Throop/The New York Times)
Feelings are complex.
Some people mourn the loss of serene hiking trails that are now shrouded in wildfire smoke, while others no longer find the same joy and release in nature. Some people turn to therapy. Others channel their anxiety into protests or initiatives to slow down the damage.
“This is becoming a major threat to mental health,” said Britt Wray, a Stanford University researcher and author of “Generation Dread,” a forthcoming book on managing climate distress. “It can make everyday life incredibly difficult to cope with.”
Psychologists and therapists say that for some people, the affliction of changing weather can cause temporary anxiety, but for others, it can trigger much darker thoughts. In a 2020 survey, more than half of Americans reported feeling anxious about the effect of the weather on their mental health, and more than two-thirds said they felt anxious about how climate change would affect the planet.
Young people are the ones who admit their concern the most.
A survey of people between the ages of 16 and 25 in 10 different countries, published in The Lancet, found that three-quarters feared the future. More than half said that humanity was doomed to disappear. Some feel betrayed by the generations and leaders that came before them. They say they feel angry but helpless when they see that people in positions of power do not act urgently.
Nearly 40 percent of young people expressed doubts about having children. If nature feels so out of balance today, some wonder what point there is in bringing children into this world destined for an even bleaker future.
Black and Latino communities, as well as indigenous peoples, feel some of the worst physical effects of climate change, living in places with a legacy of mining, energy extraction, and other polluting processes. And while these groups are among the most dismayed by climate change, community resources to deal with the emotional fallout are more limited.
Experts are quick to emphasize that people’s emotional reactions are justified. The threat is real and growing as carbon levels in the atmosphere cross dangerous new thresholds. With temperatures rising, extreme weather events will become more common.
“Sometimes I feel hopeless or sad or worried,” said Andrew Bryant, a social worker in Seattle who treats patients with weather-related anxiety. “Right now, that’s part of being a human, if you pay attention to your surroundings.”
A new world of torrential hurricanes and increasingly lethal summer heat is also putting pressure on professions that were previously far from the front lines of climate change. Hospitals and police officers in the Pacific Northwest region faced 500 heat deaths as temperatures broke records in the summer. Across the gulf, emergency workers are confronted with bigger and more frequent storms that put them in increasingly dangerous situations.
Today, millions of Americans prepare for the seasons with heightened concern. Will the children be able to go out and play without the sky being full of smoke? What storm will engulf the Atlantic coast? Will our house survive another fire season?
The challenge from now on, according to therapists, is not to allow fears and anguish to overwhelm us.
To deal with the present and find resilience, experts recommend that people find ways to move forward individually and collectively. The researchers added that humans have an important innate advantage: the ability to adapt.