SINGAPORE: The climate wars have spilled over into a public dispute about how to treat fearful children, with psychologists and psychiatrists sparring over whether kids are displaying “eco-anxiety” or a logical response to questions about the future of the planet.
The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, the Black Dog Institute, Doctors for the Environment Australia and Friends of the Earth are among more than 300 organisations and individuals to have signed an open letter warning concern and distress among children about climate change should not be pathologised as an anxiety disorder when it is often simply a rational reaction to what they are experiencing in their world.
The open letter is in response to an article published by the Institute of Public Affairs, which not only points to growing numbers of children presenting to clinicians with anxiety issues over fears about the future of the planet, but also raises concerns their treatment is being delivered through an ideological lens inappropriate in any other context.
The article, by child and adolescent mental health psychologist Clare Rowe, warns “eco-anxiety” among children is a result of them being “exposed to pervasive narratives of climate catastrophe through education, media and adult discourse”.
And when it comes to treating this anxiety, Ms Rowe, an adjunct research fellow at the IPA, a long-time challenger of current climate change and energy policy, argues clinicians often treat children with climate anxiety differently to other cases.
“Emerging treatments to climate anxiety often involve emotional immersion, validate existing fears, discourage reassurance, and promote activism or collective action as coping strategies,” she writes.
“In clinical terms, fear is affirmed rather than examined, distress is sustained rather than contained, and emotional intensity is reframed as a moral virtue.
“This is not treatment. It is the institutionalisation of therapy.”
Ms Rowe says there is a political overlay, with schools, mental health bodies and professional associations “validating climate fears and embedding advocacy into the therapeutic process”.
“Emotional states such as despair, helplessness, and urgency are often portrayed as rational responses to the climate crisis and are sometimes even encouraged as moral imperatives,” she writes.
“The consulting room and the classroom are not places for political advocacy. They exist to protect and develop children, not mobilise them.”
But the open letter warns the IPA report contains misinformation and disinformation and is “built on shaky ground”.
“We reject that climate science and support are causing climate distress – the evidence points to real-world climate impacts, not education, as the primary driver of distress,” the letter says.
“We caution identifying climate distress as a pathological anxiety, where treating it as such misrepresents both the evidence and young people’s experience, and could result in inappropriate mental health interventions.”
In particular, it criticised Ms Rowe’s report for calling for the removal of the sustainability cross-curriculum priority in schools, saying appropriate climate education doesn’t alarm children but builds their resilience and wellbeing.
Other signatories to the letter include the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners Specific Interests group, the Australian Association for Adolescent Health and Independent MP Zali Steggall.
Child and adolescent psychiatrist and pediatrician Cybele Dey, says in her practice she sees children’s distress about climate change driven not by what they are learning at school, but by what they are experiencing each day, issues such as extreme heat and air pollution.
“Research shows that those born in 2020 or later will experience two to seven times more extreme weather events in their lifetime due to climate change than their grandparents,” Dr Dey says.
“I’ve seen children who have been through more than one climate-driven extreme weather event. One young boy from northern NSW developed separation anxiety disorder after the bushfires in 2019 when his father was out fighting fires and his mum was volunteering. He managed with the help of local primary care and psychologists.
“But then came the floods, and as a young boy he loved animals, but they died in the floods. That was the trigger for a much more serious mental disorder when he was unable to separate from his mother at all, and struggled to eat or drink. He only got better with intensive therapy.”
Dr Dey says in most cases a young person’s stress about climate change reflects a healthy response to the real threat of climate change, although a mental health disorder such as major depression could develop if the stress isn’t well managed.
“No mainstream mental health organisation will say climate anxiety is a disorder. Calling something a disorder when it’s not and saying that it should be treated as if it is an anxiety disorder, that is a fringe view,” she says.
But Ms Rowe says that argument “overlooks a basic principle of mental health diagnosis (that) anxiety becomes clinically significant when it begins interfering with a child’s everyday functioning”.
“The children presenting to psychologists with climate-related fears are often not simply ‘concerned’ about the environment. Many are experiencing persistent rumination, sleep disturbance, somatic complaints, panic symptoms, hopelessness, avoidance behaviours and excessive fear about the future. Some avoid school activities, become distressed during weather events, or express fears that they will not grow up or have children of their own,” Ms Rowe says.
“These presentations can and do meet DSM-5 criteria for pathological anxiety disorders because the distress is excessive, persistent and functionally impairing.
“Recognising this is not about denying climate change or dismissing young people’s experiences. It is about applying the same evidence-based clinical standards we would apply to any other anxiety presentation in children.”