In 2011, when a deadly 9.1 magnitude earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, Dr. Thomas Doherty was in Portland, Wash., watching the events unfold on TV. His 4-year-old daughter asked him “When are one of the floods going to come to Portland?”
Doherty, a psychologist who focuses on the psychological impacts of global climate change, said the question his daughter asked in 2011 was a normal thing for a 4-year-old to ask after a natural disaster.
In the face of escalating climate disasters more and more parents, guardians, educators and physicians are having to address these questions head-on. Rather than shy away from them, Doherty and other mental health professionals said we should have more discussions about climate change and its effect on mental health.
“The challenge is not to always focus on the negative,” Doherty said. “The challenge is to sort of say, ‘OK, how are we thinking about this?’ And let’s think about it in a balanced way, so we don’t sort of perpetuate a myth that it’s always a problem, or it’s always bad.”
Opening Up to Honest Conversations
The field of clinical psychology only began to explore climate change and it’s possible effects on mental health in the past couple of decades, with psychologists and researchers like Doherty being on the forefront of that shift.
Climate psychology educator and author Leslie Davenport was also an early proponent of deeper study into the phenomenon. As the field of climate psychology is emerging and developing, Davenport advocates for more conversation on the topic, a strategy that can stave off fear and anxiety, which can lead to thoughts of impending doom.
“When we’re fearful, we fill in the gaps sometimes with that worst-case scenario as though all was said and done,” Davenport said.
In classrooms and homes across the country, parents, guardians and educators may be hesitant to address the topic head-on, especially with younger children, to not make it worse. Davenport said he finds this can often do more harm than good.
“Sometimes there’s this sense of like, I don’t want to make it worse, so I’m not gonna say anything,” Davenport said. “There’s this unintentional barrier that gets created.”
More and more psychologists and those in the field of clinical psychology are addressing the problem and tearing down that barrier. Doherty works with mental health providers across the world as they navigate this space.
Doherty has researched responses to the climate crisis within the field of clinical psychology. Doherty’s research has been used by groups such as the SeeChange Institute, an organization that provides mental health resources for healthcare providers, educators and parents.
Doherty’s advice when working with children in natural disasters or who struggle with climate anxiety, focus on the concrete things around them.
“The kid’s world is small, and so they need to be reassured in really basic ways,” Doherty said. “‘Everything’s gonna be fine.’ This is concrete. ‘This is where we’re gonna sleep. This is what we’re gonna eat. This is when we might come back home if we have to evacuate.’”
Davenport also works with small children in therapy spaces and outside of them, she says that for children up to about age 8, a lot of the focus is on encouraging their curiosity about the natural world around them.
“The best thing we can do is just keep them falling in love with the world because they already do that,” Davenport said. “‘How do rainbows work? Let’s plant a seed, there’s this gray squirrel.’”
Creating a space for conversation
When Sarah Newman, founder and executive director of the Climate Mental Health network, struggled with intense climate emotions herself, she found few resources were readily available. So she created her organization as a resource for herself and many others like her, especially young people in Gen Z.
“What we’ve really tried to do is just create spaces for young people to be able to connect and learn and grow with each other, and really bring their voices center their voices in this issue,” Newman said. “We know that young people are more impacted by the mental health impacts of the climate crisis than any other age group.”
The Climate Mental Health Network has a Gen Z advisory board of students who consult on projects as well as host their own, such as climate-centered film festivals, webinars and climate cafes. All of these are spaces where young people can express their feelings and anxieties about climate change, and wrestle with them
Zion Walker is a high school senior from Columbus Ohio who is on this year’s Gen Z advisory board. Walker said that she and her fellow board members are currently working on a film to raise awareness about climate anxiety.
During her time on the board, she has not only helped advise and educate others but has gained hope herself.
It gave me a new hope that people, at least my age, that people are actually doing something. And it’s actually making a tangible change on climate change and climate mental health. So I feel like that was like the biggest thing that so far that I’m getting out of it.”
Newman said the last cohort of students on their Gen Z advisory board saw a marked change in the two and a half years they were involved.
“By the end they were engaging, they were creating their own resources, they were creating their own programs,” Newman said. “They were doing the climate cafes and all these types of things. So it was really just awesome to see their growth in this space, and also just all of the knowledge and skills that they had developed by being part of the Gen Z Cohort, and also just the friendships, the relationships that developed in that group as well.”
Maksim Batuyev is a climate activist who works in the L.A. area organizing climate cafes and was also on the inaugural Gen Z advisory board for the Climate Mental Health Network.
After Batuyev finished his environmental studies degree at Michigan State University in 2020, climate anxiety was still a stressor in his life, which ultimately led him to host climate cafes and work with the Climate Mental Health Network.
Batuyev said he saw how mental health struggles were common but taboo with peers his age, and many of them were worsened by Climate Change. So hosting Climate Cafes were a response to that.
“I think that’s a trend that we see in mental health struggles, in general, that’s just now exacerbated by this sort of very literal end of the world, like a very existential threat that you know we can’t necessarily self-soothe our way through.”
The climate cafe movement began in 2015 and consists of “community led, informal spaces where everyone is welcome to join the conversation and get involved,” according to the Climate Cafe Hub. They are fully confidential and usually involve food or forms of creative expression like art or music.
“So climate cafes are a container to be like, ‘You’re not crazy for feeling this way,” according to the Climate Cade Hub.
In the cafes that Batuyev facilitates, he emphasizes the fact that they are not focused on action.
“We recognize that activism, protest, advocacy, all of that is so important,” Batuyev said. “And that’s why every single other space we have is focused on those things. This is probably the one space that’s sort of a haven from all of the busyness and all of the activity.”
Pepperdine Graphic Media hosted a climate cafe at Pepperdine on Alumni park on April 17. The cafe was open to all students and was facilitated by Falon Barton, campus minister for the University Church of Christ, and Dr. Helen Holmlund, assistant professor of Biology.
“I think it was really meaningful that students who didn’t know each other and didn’t all know the facilitators were willing to and even eager to share experiences with the climate crisis and of nature,” Barton said. “And I think it’s really profound and inspiring to hear how the environment and how the natural world is so meaningful to all of us.”
Exercises and Practices
When looking for ways to ease climate anxiety, keeping the body moving and the mind clear can relieve some of the built up stress.
Davenport is using her 30 years of clinical experience to explore the field of Climate Psychology. Her book “All the Feelings Under the Sun” breaks down the complexities of climate change.
“It’s tricky to not want to take something so complex and big and make it palatable and a way to engage,” Davenport said.
The book, tailored to youth, contains exercises promoting mindfulness and ways to ease anxiety. Davenport advises readers to take their time reading the book and complete the exercises, such as mindful breathing, journaling or artistic expression through crafts.
One of those exercises is called balloon breathing, a concrete way for a child, or anyone of any age, to participate in mindful breathing. It asks the reader to imagine they are holding a balloon in front of their face. When breathing, the reader is asked to imagine they are blowing up a balloon.
“Kids are not very abstract thinkers,” Davenport said. “It’s kind of, they know a balloon, what a balloon looks like, you know, so it just kind of adds that ability to relate to it a little more.”
Readers are invited to create a “Making Healthier World Together” journal filled with reflections and writing prompts listed sporadically throughout the book. The “Internal Weather Report” asks readers to give a weather report describing their feelings and analyze for potential “weather patterns.” Examples include feeling hazy, stormy or warm and breezy.
Greater Good in Action, a program created by UC Berkeley’s Science center to promote social and emotional well-being, said mindful breathing can reduce anxiety and work as a grounding method.
“Mindful breathing in particular is helpful because it gives us an anchor—our breath—on which we can focus when we find ourselves carried away by a stressful thought,” Greater Good in Action wrote on their website. “Mindful breathing can also help us stay ‘present’ in the moment, rather than being distracted by regrets in the past or worries about the future.”
Davenport said she sees the children she works with using the exercises she provides in her book. She said the children are able to take the exercises with them and use them in any scenario.
“They start to take it on as their own because they felt the value and it’s charming too because there’s no shame in it,” Davenport said.
Intergenerational Support
According to the Climate Mental Health Network’s website, people are 12 times more likely to take climate action because of their love for future generations than any other issue, and 78% of parents in the U.S. are concerned about the impact of climate change on their children. The problem is that only half of that amount of parents have actually talked to their children about it.
Newman said parents and guardians should make it clear to kids that they are aware of the problem, and that it is not up to kids alone to solve the problem, but rather that there is an intergenerational effort to address it.
“They’re stepping into a movement that is filled with many people that are reaching out, extending their arms and welcoming them into it,” Newman said. “It’s not up to young people alone to solve it. There’s many people across all ages through this intergenerational strategy that are working as hard and as quickly as they can to try to address this.”
Davenport also emphasized the importance of addressing the problem outside of the traditional therapeutic space and within larger communities that range in age.
“I’m a big believer that a lot of the therapeutic tools don’t have to live in the therapy setting,” Davenport said. “A lot can happen in groups and communities and other types of conversations and resources.”
Ultimately, an intergenerational approach provides new perspectives on common feelings of anxiety, and reassurance that there are many others there to help with them.
“There’s a beautiful value in knowledge and wisdom that’s grown through the ages and knowledge and wisdom that comes from a fresh perspective,” Davenport said.
Climate Curriculum
Mainstreaming therapeutic practices and extending climate education to schools is what counselors like Davenport and Newman hope to see in the near future.
Newman said the Climate Mental Health Network is working to launch their resources from kindergarten to high school and get parents involved in the change.
“We want to create more resources for parents and ways for parents to be able to connect with each other,” Newman said.
Davenport also looks to implement practices in schools by promoting Social Emotional Learning and mindfulness. Davenport said she is working with schools to introduce a climate curriculum and hope some of her exercises are used in the classroom.
“These will be seeds that can become models and just spread out to whatever climate curriculum they’re given,” Davenport said.
Davenport said the patients coming to her office asking for help and getting younger and younger. They are worried about their future.
“The youth have the highest distress because they’re living into this future,” Davenport said.
Creating a space for youth who are experiencing climate anxiety is one way to ease their worries. Davenport ends her book with a quote emphasizing the importance of community and working together to remain hopeful in a world that seems doomed.
“It can be helpful to remember that you are joined by many others around the world who share the same passion and will invest their time and creativity into making a healthier world,” Davenport wrote.
There is much more to the conversation than just anxiety, Batuyev said, and all emotions are welcome in that conversation
“We really wanna welcome all of the wide range of emotions that can come,” Batuyev said. “I mean, that’s why we use climate distress instead of climate anxiety, because it’s a lot more than just anxiety. There’s hope, there’s joy, there’s anger, there’s confusion, there’s sadness. There’s fear, there’s overwhelm.”
Ultimately, Batuyev hopes that clinical psychology surrounding climate change will no longer be a separate approach, but accepted in all clinical settings.
“Eventually, I think we’ll reach a point where we just understand environmental and human wellbeing as inextricably linked, and wouldn’t even think of treating those things as separate,” Batuyev said.
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Contact Joe Allgood via email: joe.allgood@pepperdine.edu
Contact Gabrielle Salgado via email: gabrielle.salgado@pepperdine.edu
