In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, we’ve been highlighting the intersection of climate change and mental health on the Moms Clean Air Force Twitter page throughout the month of May. A growing body of research affirms that climate change is having a wide range of impacts on our emotional, psychological, and social well-being, from the direct trauma of living through an extreme weather event to the gnawing anxiety that many of us feel every time another frightening headline pings across our phones.
Openly discussing how climate change affects our mental health is one of the many steps we can take towards cultivating resilient hearts and minds in these difficult times. Here are five things parents should know about climate change and mental health:
1. Climate emotions are a sign that we care. Feelings like climate anxiety and climate grief are normal, rational responses to the frightening reality of climate change, not a sign that something’s wrong with us. Climate distress can be painful and overwhelming, and as parents, we may worry about our kids’ futures. Acknowledging and validating these difficult emotions is a key step in learning to cope. We feel deeply because we *care* deeply, and our care for the world is desperately needed right now.
Learn more about climate change and mental health in our new fact sheet.
2. When the state of the world feels especially difficult or dark, “meaning-focused coping” can help. There’s a lot of pain in the world right now: a growing climate crisis; terrible images of war Ukraine on the news every day; oppressive, violent systemic racism and inequity; terrifying gun violence; and an ongoing global pandemic. These times can feel impossibly hard, and one strategy that can help us cultivate resilient #mentalhealth in dark times is “meaning-focused coping.”
Meaning-focused coping involves honestly assessing our circumstances, while also seeking threads of purpose, meaning, and connection that allow us to express our values. It might look like reflecting on gratitude, seeking ways to help others, or getting curious about how difficult times might generate insight and growth. Here’s a blog post from climate emotions researcher Dr. Britt Wray that explains meaning-focused coping beautifully.
Some meaning-focused questions for reflection: How is climate change offering you and your family a chance to live out your values? How might the climate crisis be an invitation for deeper connection – with your children, with your community, with the planet, with yourself?
3. Collective action is good for our mental health. Taking collective action can reduce depression symptoms related to climate anxiety. For many parents, increasing climate concern can be associated with significant feelings of isolation: while a majority of Americans are worried about climate change, only 35% of us are talking about it even occasionally.
When we’re anxious and afraid about the future, feeling isolated doesn’t help our mental health. But being in community with others does: Recent research from Yale University and Suffolk University found that when college students experiencing climate anxiety took part in collective #climateaction—such as joining a climate group, going to protests, or working with others to contact policymakers—they were less likely to experience symptoms of depression.
Collective action can help us combat feelings of isolation and find meaning and purpose in the climate crisis. Have you joined a climate group yet? What might collective action look like for you and your family?
4. Our mental health is affected by the air we breathe. Poor air quality is linked with depression, anxiety, learning problems, and other kinds of mental illness. Climate change is making poor air quality worse, and that’s going to have an increasing impact on our mental health, especially for the BIPOC communities hit hardest by air pollution. The 2022 State of the Air Report from the American Lung Association found that over 40% of Americans are living in places with failing grades for unhealthy levels of particle pollution or ozone. That’s a lot of families breathing unhealthy air.
Learn more about the connections between air pollution, mental health, and environmental justice from Environmental Health News’ important reporting. And join Moms Clean Air Force in fighting for clean air for all of us.
5. Constructive hope can help us stay engaged in the climate movement—even if we sometimes still feel worried or doubtful. Research suggests that “constructive hope”—the belief that awareness about #climate is rising, that we have the capacity to change, and that people are taking action—is associated with greater engagement in climate action, and greater support for environmentally sound policies. This kind of hope isn’t the “magical thinking” that assumes everything’s going to get better on its own; it’s engaged, *active* hope. It’s a hope that believes, as one of the most recent IPCC reports asserted, that resilience is our capacity for transformation.
Hope and doubt aren’t opposites, either—we can be hopeful and worried, and still act. And when we take action that others (like our kids) can see, we help generate hope for them, too. Our climate actions have powerful, positive ripple effects.
The kind of hope that’s grounded in determined, courageous action is contagious. And as planetary health expert Howard Frumpkin explains in his article on hope, health, and the climate crisis, it’s also good for our physical and mental health:
“The challenge of our time is to confront, address, and reverse the damage humans have done to the planet, to assure health, well-being, and thriving for people today and for future generations. We must nurture and sustain hope if we are to meet this challenge.”
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