News reports regularly remind us that the environment is under threat from a raft of climate change effects including loss of biodiversity, melting ice sheets and devastating ‘climate fires’.
If it sometimes feels too much or is genuinely getting you down, then you could be suffering from ‘eco-anxiety’.
Defined by the American Psychological Association as “the chronic fear of environmental doom”, eco-anxiety is the subject of a seminar to be held at the University of Auckland which aims to help people understand their emotional response to consistently bad environmental news.
Eco-anxiety has also been called a pre-traumatic stress disorder, brought on by what Professor Niki Harre from the School of Psychology calls the apocalyptic double play of media that insists that our planet is headed for catastrophe and that politicians are doing nothing about it.
Continue reading at University of Auckland.
Image via University of Auckland.