The climate crisis is causing mental health issues

Fashion designer Marian Yap Hanyun broke into tears during her first therapy session.

The graduate of a New York university had always been interested in environmental issues such as sustainable fashion and was familiar with the heated debate surrounding the climate crisis, particularly among youths. With conversations on the environment and sustainability deeply interwoven into her curriculum, she even took up an elective on zero waste design and other relevant classes at uni.

However, increasingly, the anxiety from all the bad news about the climate and the planet's environment – floods, forest fires, biodiversity loss – got to her.

Yap deals with her climate anxiety by encouraging and supporting small green acts that can contribute to the overall battle against global warming. — Handout

“Year by year, the anxiety of all the news started to weigh heavily on me, and it was the first thing I mentioned that broke me into tears at my first therapy session,” admits the 20something Yap.

She isn’t alone.

Researchers are saying that the climate crisis isn’t just bringing about more natural disasters on a scale that was unimaginable just a few decades ago, it’s also affecting our mental health.

Besides deaths, injuries and billions in infrastructure damage as a direct result of extreme weather events such as floods, forest fires and pollution, the climate crisis is also causing distress, anxiety and, in some of the worst cases, even suicidal tendencies.

Feelings can range from grief that comes with losing a home or stress from having to suffer a disruption in services like transport and telecommunications to losing income due to the closure of businesses.

Weathering stress

A report by the Imperial College of London’s Institute of Global Health Innovation published in May this year – The impact of climate change on mental health and emotional wellbeing: Current evidence and implications for policy and practice – shows that there is a link between events due to climate change, and mental health.

Besides the clear relationship between increased temperatures and the number of suicides, the authors argue that there is also evidence of severe distress following extreme weather events.

“The available evidence suggests that climate change has a significant and multifaceted impact on mental health and emotional wellbeing,” they contend.

Young people, the report further points out, seem particularly affected by such distress as their future will be highly affected by a changing climate.

“... They feel limited control over the actions taken by those in positions of power,” the paper explains.

So much so that psychologists have even coined a term for this: ecoanxiety or climate anxiety.

Flooded by emotions

Children playing games with counsellors at a flood relief centre in Perlis. Young people, a report points out, are particularly affecte by climate anxiety as their future will be highly affected by a changing climate. — Filepic/The Star

Assoc Prof Dr Anasuya Jegathevi Jegathesan, a psychologist who counselled victims of the massive floods in Gua Musang, Kelantan, a few years ago, recalls that the main emotions then were those of grief and loss. “No one panicked outright because people were in a state of shock and trying to take in what had happened. There was a sense of loss and grief. Those were the main emotions we saw.

“There was also confusion over how nature suddenly went so wrong and a few talked about having cut down too many trees,” says the psychology programme director at a local university.

Climate anxiety is prevalent enough now to have triggered the existence of “climate cafés”, described by the Climate Psychology Alliance as “simple, hospitable, empathetic spaces where fears and uncertainties about our climate and ecological crisis can be safely expressed”. There’s even the nonprofit Good Grief Network that provides support for climate distress in Europe and the United States. However, Dr Jegathesan has never encountered anything like them during the course of her work in Malaysia.

So how worried are Malaysians really about climate change?

While any flood evacuee would feel distressed at losing his or her home to a deluge, in reality, many in Malaysia have yet to make that connection with how the climate crisis will eventually affect their lives, or that it might already be having an effect.

This is despite the fact that accelerated warming temperatures globally is causing more and more extreme weather events such as the floods that devastated Europe and China last month and the wildfires in California in the United States, Greece and even in the Arctic Circle in Russia.

A force for good?

According to a poll conducted by multinational market research firm Ipsos in July, while Malaysia is ranked No.1 for being worried about the Covid-19 pandemic, it fell to last place when it came to worries about the climate crisis.

The survey polled 20,502 adults in 28 countries; in Malaysia, 76% of respondents were worried about the coronavirus and only 1% were concerned about climate change.

In contrast, a survey by the United Nations Development Programme of 1,393 youths in Malaysia, conducted between July 28 and Aug 18 last year, found that 92% think that climate change is a crisis while nine in 10 reported experiencing environment and climate-related effects in the last three years.

Citing the Ipsos poll during a climate change webinar on Malaysia Day, Environment and Water Ministry secretary-general Datuk Seri Zaini Ujang said the ministry is disappointed by the lack of awareness and care shown by Malaysian adults.

“This is a very serious issue,” he said, adding that in comparison with the pandemic, the impact of climate change would be far greater in the long term.

Pointing out that general public anxiety about climate change in Malaysia is still very mild, Dr Wong Kok Fye explains that this is because it is difficult for people to see its long-term impact.

“They probably have some rational knowledge about it but they are not impacted emotionally.

“It’s more difficult for someone to worry over long-term climate change compared with immediate climate change impact,” says Dr Wong, who is a member of the American Psychological Association.

For those who do experience climate anxiety, Dr Jegathesan thinks that how we deal with it can help save the planet.

Some, she points out, will resort to doing meditation or exercise to calm their worries or even pretend they aren’t worried or simply ignore the issue all together.

“But when it comes to nature, it doesn’t go away.

“The hardest way to deal with anxiety is the one that all of us need to start doing, which is to do something about the cause of your anxiety.

“If you think that now, nature is in a crisis, you can do simple stuff like recycling or reusing to reduce waste. Ultimately, people who do something about their anxiety about nature are the people who are going to save our world.”

This is exactly the way in which Yap is dealing with her anxiety. Just do it

When she moved to Kuala Lumpur, Yap made a conscious decision to rent in a location within walking distance to her workplace, knowing the environmental benefits of not driving or taking fossil fuel-powered public transport.

And where she used to squabble with her architect husband over the increasing heap of plastic containers from food deliveries, things have improved tremendously since they moved into a landed property in Seremban.

“It has gotten better now that we live in landed property as we are vaccinated and there are less barriers to bringing our own containers to the stores to tapau (take away).”

Not having to use elevators or narrow walkways where there are chances of having to be physically close to other people during this pandemic has also helped lessen the need to have food delivered.

“A landed house means we have space to park our bikes, which we have been using to take our containers to the stores to tapau our food,” says Yap, who still practises a car-free lifestyle with her husband.

She used to be a little shy about taking her own food containers to restaurants and still has relatives who make fun of her and her husband’s lifestyle. But she has seen a difference in attitude among her friends of late.

“I think a lot of progress has been made recently in terms of Malaysians being more environmentally conscious,” she says.

Yap remembers how her friends used to stare right through her whenever she talked about reducing waste when she was home for summer breaks during her university days a few years ago.

“Now, some of them have started carrying their own containers and metal straws,” she says.

What has helped Yap in dealing with her climate anxiety is the realisation that the fate of the environment does not ultimately depend on her daily habits.

“But if I can encourage and support sustainable practices and causes, they would be small wins that contribute to larger victories, especially in areas such as policy or lawmaking, that I hope to see improvements in in the future.”

It’s people like Yap who will save us all.