Climate Mental Health

Beyond Gloom and Doom: How to Teach Climate Change Towards Empowerment

Download a large (11x17") poster of the 9 beyond climate doom and gloom strategies.

In response to the climate crisis, many around the world, especially young people, have reported feeling overwhelmed, powerless, sad, and anxious. Overlooking emotions while learning about crushing climate data can cause anxiety, and helplessness, and impede our ability to learn and take action. How do we support youth in stepping up rather than shutting down?

The activities below serve as resources for processing climate change-related emotions, inspiring action together, and hope for the future. These activities aim to facilitate the expression, processing, and validation of youths' climate emotions while also encouraging positive emotions and reducing stress. These activities are not a replacement for services from a mental health professional. Please seek professional help if any of your students or you are at risk.

The Goal

The goal is to facilitate the expression, processing, and validation of youths' climate emotions while also encouraging positive emotions and reducing stress.

The goal is not to eliminate negative emotions. However, if emotions are exceeding a personal threshold, it can result in becoming angry or disengaged. Resiliency is not about the absence of negative emotions; it is about managing these emotions without letting them get "stuck" to avoid larger mental health challenges.

By becoming more resilient, listening, finding shared solidarity in the community, moving through our grief, incorporating trauma-informed practices, practicing social, emotional, and positive coping skills, and cultivating hope, we can expand our resiliency and move towards empowerment.

The Challenge

There are both direct and indirect ways that climate change can affect mental health in youth. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlights the increasing impacts of climate change around the world such as droughts, famine, heatwaves, species die-off, and increased intensity of hurricanes and wildfires are reality and projected to increase.

Direct impacts: Research has shown that natural disasters that can be attributed to or that were magnified by climate change have a direct, significant impact on mental health and well-being.

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For example, high rates of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) continue for months and years after experiencing a natural hazard such as a wildfire close to home. In youth, experiencing natural hazards can have negative impacts on emotional regulation, behavior, ability to adjust, and academic performance. More generally, healthy child development, which occurs in the context of stable families and communities, is threatened by climate change effects on livelihoods, displacement, etc. Exposure to these direct impacts can be long-term and accumulating.

Indirect impacts: Anxiety about the effects of climate change on our current and future lives (eco-anxiety), worry, or chronic fear of environmental doom are indirect impacts of a changing climate.

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A recent survey of 10,000 young people from across the world indicated staggering levels of distress, spanning emotions such as sadness, anxiety, and anger at and distrust of governments, policy-makers, and adults in general. Youth are especially impacted by these emotions, as they figure out how to deal with an environment that is changing and uncertain, and with the associated changes in their economic, social, and physical security.