Dr. Susan Clayton is a conservation psychologist. Her research, which examines people’s relationship with the natural environment, is currently focused on the implications of climate change for psychological wellbeing. Susan has written about the effects of climate change on mental health and has developed a scale to assess climate anxiety. She is author or editor of six books, a fellow of the American Psychological Association, and a lead author on the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
In “The Psychological Impacts of Global Climate Change,” a paper that was published in American Psychology in 2011, you and co-author with Thomas Doherty argued that climate change would have significant psychological impacts. Three years later, when we last spoke with you, you said that a lot of people still did not think of climate change as having psychological impacts. That has certainly changed. We’re now seeing stories about climate anxiety in mainstream media. In 2022, you were a lead author of one part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report, and it included—for the first time—impacts to mental health. What changed over the last decade?
There had actually been a brief mention of mental health impacts in the 2015 report, but it was more like a paragraph saying, “There are probably mental health impacts.” The 2022 report was the first time they were really explored in depth. In part, the reason for that change was that an increasing number of psychological researchers were writing about it. Another factor is that in general, people—including journalists—are now more aware of and willing to talk about climate change than they were 10 years ago.
You were a lead author of a chapter in the IPCC report entitled “Health Well-Being and the Changing Structure of Communities.” What were some of the key findings presented in that chapter?
With those reports, you are summarizing vast amounts of research, and relying only on published material, so there is some check on accuracy. The work also has to be approved by all of the participating governments, so you can’t say anything really out there or controversial. Mostly, what we found was that there is very good evidence of negative impacts of climate change on mental health around the world. There is more evidence of impact in some places than others. That is partly because some places are more vulnerable to climate change than others, and partly because some places have produced more research than others. There is evidence linking things like higher temperatures and extreme weather events to increased mental health impacts. There is also evidence of indirect effects associated with things like migration and food insecurity.
The main message about mental health is that yes, the evidence is good. In IPCC reports you have to express confidence in your findings using terms like “very low,” “low,” “medium,” “high,” and “very high” confidence. We felt very high confidence in the quality of this data to say there are mental health impacts.
If you could be “out there” and more controversial, what would you love to be able to say in a widely viewed report like the IPCC Assessment?
I would be a bit more emphatic about the threat and the potentially existential nature of it. We know that young people, especially, are being affected, and we know that the possible magnitude of that impact is very strong. We can’t really say for sure what it will be, though, because current generations are facing different conditions than past generations. We can only make informed guesses about how those impacts will manifest themselves when today’s children become adults, and so on.
What is known about eco-anxiety, and what resiliency factors and approaches are effective for managing and overcoming it?
I want to make a distinction between “climate anxiety” and “eco-anxiety.” I usually refer to “climate anxiety” when specifically talking about climate change, but there is a very high level of overlap with a more general kind of eco-anxiety. You can even distinguish between normal, adaptive, and problematic levels of climate anxiety.
The first question is, “What is the evidence for people feeling anxious?” Some of the studies I’ve read or been involved in have looked at massive samples, in some cases global samples, and found things like 84% of young people around the world are at least moderately worried about climate change.
A study I was involved with just last year found that 85% of young people in the United States are at least moderately worried, with well over half saying they feel anxious, sad, helpless, powerless… those kinds of negative emotions. We give them the opportunity to mention positive emotions just so that we’re not biased, and a very small percentage say they feel optimistic or indifferent. I worry about the impact of this. I don’t want the anxiety to go away because it reflects that you recognize there’s a problem, and at an appropriate level of anxiety, it might motivate you to do something about the problem and think “How can I address this? How can I get involved?” But I worry about less adaptive, less functional ways in which this anxiety might be affecting people.
Because I teach undergraduate students, I talk to lots of people in their late teens and early twenties, and I have children in their twenties. The first time I talked to my son about it when he was twenty-something, I was stunned by his pessimism. A lot of young people report enduring statements like “humanity is doomed.” They say, “The future is frightening. I will not have access to some of the things my parents had access to.” They’re also saying things like, “This is affecting the way I plan for the future.” We know that they are pessimistic and concerned, but it’s hard to know how much that really affects their decisions. A lot of young people are wondering if they should have children. Having children is a pretty strong impulse for people, so most of them will end up having children if they were going to in the first place, but it’s not clear how much of a behavioral impact this will have. Some of them are saying it will affect where they decide to live, or how much effort they put into their education, because they feel the future is so uncertain. That worries me a lot.
This leads me to the second way of thinking about anxiety. Within the mental health field, we talk about anxiety disorders, and anxiety becomes a problem when you don’t feel that you have the resources to cope with it and you become overwhelmed. I do hear climate activists say things like, “I feel paralyzed. I feel incapable of acting. My emotions are overwhelming. I’m not eating properly and I can’t sleep.” In a 2020 paper that I published with a colleague, Bryan Karazsia, we wanted to measure whether climate anxiety did have those sorts of clinical implications. We developed a measure that asked, “Are your worries about climate change impairing your ability to function?” We came up with a reliable measure and most people say it does not impair their ability to function. But about a fifth of people said, “Yes, to some extent, my worries about climate change are interfering with my ability to function.”
The first study was just in America; it was not a representative sample. Since then, it’s been studied around the world among a variety of age groups. Most of the research says that young people are more worried than older people, although that’s not a hundred percent true. What is true is that in every place it has been studied, it is associated with clinical measures of anxiety and depression. Being anxious about the climate is not itself a mental health disorder, but it does seem to perhaps be a contributor.
Have there been any studies conducted among environmental practitioners to gauge their levels of climate or eco-anxiety?
There have been a few studies that have talked to environmental practitioners, and some of them tend to find stronger emotions; definitely greater concern and worry, but also sometimes greater hope. I think you can feel both of those emotions at the same time, and that has been also found in several studies. I haven’t personally studied people who are working in the environmental field, but I have asked about a measure of one’s feeling of connection to the natural world, and people with a stronger environmental identity do feel more anxiety about the climate.
Are there any kind of new or emerging treatment approaches geared specifically toward overcoming or managing climate anxiety?
It’s very early on in the development of research, but there is some evidence that some of the strategies that are useful for anyone to cope with anxiety are useful here, like learning to monitor your emotions, recognize when you’re becoming overwhelmed, and then step back from the source of your anxiety: stop looking at the news, go for a walk, engage in mindful breathing, or do other kinds of de-stressing activities.
More specific to climate anxiety is connecting to other people who feel the same way. We have quite a lot of evidence that social support is important for maintaining mental health. Social connections not only help you feel like you’re not alone; you might feel like you have more agency. There is pretty good evidence that getting involved in trying to do something about the problem helps you cope with your climate anxiety and keeps it from reaching overwhelming levels. Instead of being a passive victim, you become an active agent. Even if you’re still pessimistic about the outcome, there are positive emotions associated with connecting with other people and acting on your values that can be very validating and help people to feel a sense of meaning and purpose.
What do we know about the impact of optimism on willingness to take action?
In general, people tend to talk about hope rather than optimism. Optimism being a sense that things will probably work out, and hope being a sense that there’s at least a possibility that things will work out. Of course, if you don’t feel any hope, you won’t take action. We talk about learned helplessness, but just feeling like, “Nothing I do will make a difference.” That’s why the extent to which people report powerlessness and hopelessness is disturbing. Yes, people need to have a feeling that something they do has at least the potential to make a difference.
I’ll say something else about hope. You may have run into the name of Maria Ojala, she’s a Swedish researcher, and she talks about hope in a variety of ways. Hope based on denial, which is like, “The problem’s probably not really that bad” is not a good thing because you can’t maintain it and you’re not going to do anything about the problem. There’s also hope based on a sense of real possibilities. Maria Ojala uses the term “defiant hope,” which I really like. It’s almost like a small “p” political act. Getting into the big P, politics, can just muddy the message. It’s a decision to be hopeful that has a strategic impact potentially on the way we think about the issue and on public policies regarding the issue.
Is psychology providing any insight into ways that people can find courage to act?
One of the ways would be to connect with others and form groups. The groups might start as simply a way to share emotions, but then develop a more action-oriented ben, because having other people support you does give courage. We need more messaging about possibilities. Some people talk about the media bias towards doom and gloom. That’s true in many domains. But there are some podcasts, social media platforms, and other forms of communication that are focused on hopeful messages. Whether they are sharing news about a new technology, a new policy being proposed, or something great that one group or individual did, those kinds of messages can inspire courage because they increase the sense of possibility and help people realize that if others are working on this, they can, too.
How about you? Where do you find hope and courage to do the work that you’re doing?
I find hope through my connections with other people in a variety of ways. My involvement in the IPCC was so inspiring because it involved hundreds of people from around the world coming together and putting in a lot of work. It is voluntary, and these people would not be doing that work if they thought there was no point. They’re doing that in the hopes that there can be a message that will have an impact. At the meetings, people weren’t just full of gloom and depression; they were very inspiring.
I think that’s true in other groups of environmental scientists as well, that there’s really inspiration from just recognizing that other people are working on this. Also, particularly when I talk to young activists. I run into a lot of young activists (not so much at rallies; more like panel discussions) and they are putting in a lot of effort. That gives me hope for what can be accomplished.
There’s a third strand, which is kind of almost a negative influence. Sometimes I do feel tempted to say, “Things are too terrible. We’re doomed. I’ll just give up.” But then I think about people who are dealing with other kinds of problems—like poverty and racism. I often hear from people in minoritized groups that they don’t like referring to climate change as this existential crisis, as if it’s new, and everything was fine before climate change. Because everything wasn’t fine, and some places still are in terrible conditions. Women in Afghanistan… people in Ukraine… all kinds of people face really, really difficult problems, and they haven’t given up because they don’t have the luxury of saying, “Oh, this is too much for me.” They keep fighting, so who am I to say, “Oh, no, I can’t deal with the uncertainty and anxiety around climate change?”
The American Psychological Association’s (APA) Task force on Climate Change (for which you are a liaison) issued a report in 2022 that included recommendations to advance work on climate change. One recommendation was to, “Promote engagement of psychological scientists with the policymakers, practitioners and community members on climate change issues.” Is that happening?
That report sparked action in several domains. First, the APA made a big push to highlight climate change in their annual convention. This is a huge convention of 15,000 attendees, so that was an effective way to communicate to other psychologists that they should be paying attention to this, as well as communicate the relevance of psychology to the larger world and professional sphere.
The APA has also been involved in congressional briefings, and they try to highlight climate change when they talk to people about issues of psychological concern. They try to make connections with other nonprofits and with branches of the government that are focusing on environmental issues and on mental health. They have definitely been communicating the connection to a variety of different people in different roles.
What about in academia? Are you seeing more of an integration of environmental science and mental health? What are you seeing in terms of student interest in this topic?
Certainly for undergraduates. I personally have a number of students that say they’re really interested in climate anxiety, but that’s because they’re talking to me, so I don’t know how widespread that is. Among graduate students, I see a lot of psychologists who are highly motivated by the opportunity to address this from a psychological perspective. I think it’s actually very rewarding to them. They think, “Wow, I love and have skills in psychology, and I can apply them to something that I think really matters.” I do see growth there. I also see it in more and more mental health-focused conferences. I was just at the American Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and they had some focus on climate change. The mental health field in general is definitely much more aware of it than certainly even five years ago probably. You also see that in grant funding. I have seen more government funding that recognizes this connection and wants to further investigate it.
When we talked back in 2014, you said that one of the strongest impacts on behavior is social modeling, what people see others doing. In your research or in all of the literature that you had to review for the IPCC report, have you come across any really insightful or inspiring examples of how social modeling is leading to improved climate resilience or just increased climate action in a community?
Some of the most specific examples that I’m aware of have involved encouraging people to reduce energy use or to reduce water use. A program that I believe started out in California but is now being applied more broadly, just worked by giving people feedback on their energy use compared to their neighbors’. If you’re using less energy than your neighbors, you get a little smiley face. If you’re using more energy than your neighbors, you get a frowny face. Some programs have used a green light if you’re doing well, a yellow if you’re not doing so well, and red if it’s getting much worse. This has been found to reduce people’s energy use because they don’t want to be worse than their neighbors. One of the strongest predictors, if not the strongest, of whether or not you install a solar roof is whether your neighbors have a solar roof.
Ten years ago, we talked about what was then known about the connection between a healthy environment and human health and well-being, you said, “We have pretty good evidence that there is a connection at all kinds of levels, but we haven’t gotten enough specificity in terms of how much exposure to nature is needed to make a difference and what counts as nature.” What more do we know about the power of that connection now?
There’s still a lot we don’t know, but there is more and more evidence that being out in green environments—and to some extent, blue environments—has a calming effect, promotes more positive social interactions, and makes people feel happier. Our brains tend to more creative and have better cognitive functioning just from being out in nature. There has been more evidence on how higher temperatures and poor air quality are tied to lots of mental health problems, both in the short and long term. Poor air quality and higher temperatures both lead to increased preterm birth, which is associated with a greater lifetime risk of mental health problems
You see lots of medical societies using this information. There is a program called NatureRX for example, where they are literally prescribing nature. I saw one study that looked at how much exposure to nature you needed, and they found that something like 30 minutes, three times a week was kind of the maximum bang for the buck in terms of the amount of time.
Any final words of advice for Leaf Litter readers?
Climate change is affecting some people more than others. In general, people don’t like injustice, so inequity can be a new way of conveying the message. It’s not just an important thing for people to understand; it can also motivate them to act to address the problem.
