‘Eco-anxiety’ is a crushing weight for many young Canadians. And they say schools aren’t doing enough

By Natasha Comeau Special to the Star

Feb. 23, 2020

During Yellowknife’s first Fridays For Future climate change march last fall, Dr. Courtney Howard spoke about her experience with a condition called eco-anxiety to “the most Yellowknifers I’ve seen in one spot.”

She asked the young crowd — an estimated 1,000 people — to raise their hands if they also find themselves worried about climate change, and she watched “all these little hands go up.”

Every day, young people are immersed in unrelenting and alarming climate change information, particularly on social media, which has contributed to the new mental health phenomenon. Eco-anxiety leads to intense feelings of stress, fear and grief in reaction to climate change.

In response, some countries are introducing more targeted climate curricula. But that movement is slow to arrive in Canada.

“I first became aware of eco-anxiety when it happened to me,” says Howard, an emergency doctor in the Northwest Territories. She began dealing with crippling anxiety after educating herself about the state of our planet in 2012.

“I finished reading Bill McKibben’s ‘Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math’ in the fetal position, curled up around my eight-month-old daughter, thinking climate change is going to change her life.”

Today she has transformed that fear into action, speaking out about her experience with eco-anxiety and advocating for the expansion of climate education.

Eco-anxiety was first defined in 2017 by the American Psychological Association as “a chronic fear of environmental doom.” The condition can be debilitating, emotionally exhausting and lead to depression, loneliness, lethargy and feelings of helplessness. “I didn’t know anyone else feeling this way and was incredibly lonely,” says Howard. “It impacted my daily function a lot.”

Eco-anxiety presents itself differently from other forms of anxiety, says Niki Harre, a psychology professor at the University of Auckland. It is less individual; instead, it is a fear for the collective future.

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