In early May, with wildfire season already raging in Western Canada, seven people took part in a monthly support group meeting via Zoom.
Toronto-based facilitator Kady Cowan began the conversation by encouraging others to acknowledge that climate change-related concerns weigh heavily on their minds. In a soothing voice, Cowan said she was worried about British Columbia's unprecedented “zombie fires” that devoured peat and tree roots over the winter and would return in the spring.
The organization, which Cowan calls “Climate Sanctuary,” is a peer support group she founded more than four years ago for people in climate-related roles, both professional and volunteer, and calls The discussion gradually grew as other participants shared their concerns. The rest of the 90-minute meeting was punctuated by poetry readings, controlled breathing techniques, and opportunities to explore a range of emotions.
“It's not unusual to feel heartbroken as we watch the world evaporate around us and see the things we all depend on disappear,” Cowan said. said in an interview. “It's not an illness to worry about it.”
Climate peer support groups like Cowan are increasingly being recognized as one way to help build mental health resilience in a world that can sometimes seem indifferent to the effects of climate change.
At that session in early May, several in the group expressed relief at being able to connect with like-minded peers. That's important, Cowan says.
“A lot of people just want their feelings validated,” she says.
Cowan said the group's impetus came from the “huge disconnect” he felt between what scientists had to say about climate change and the failure of decision-makers to act on it.
Anger and resentment began to build, she said, and she had nowhere to go.
“People burn out easily in this job for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that the problems are so big that they feel overwhelmed,” says John, who has spent much of his career working on health initiatives. Cowan said. Making the care sector more environmentally sustainable.
But as more Canadians face the devastating effects of extreme weather events due to climate change, how can people continue the fight to protect the health of our planet while taking care of their mental health? The problem extends beyond environmental circles.
The mental health impacts of climate change are considered a pressing public health challenge in Canada, but remain largely underappreciated.
A report produced last year by the Public Health Agency of Canada, based on interviews with more than 20 leading public health experts, found that the impact has been underestimated and that Canada's health-care system is “underestimating this growing problem. “We are completely unprepared and understaffed to deal with this.”
Concerns about climate change are part of a larger public health challenge. It often refers to the heightened distress one feels over the impending threat of climate change. These fears may be rooted in direct experience with extreme weather events or exposure to climate change messages.
“There's a mental health crisis looming with anxiety about the climate crisis,” said Nate Charak, a Toronto psychiatrist who hosts group psychotherapy sessions focused on climate change.
Although climate anxiety is not considered a mental illness, and in fact some researchers argue that it is an appropriate response to the scale of the crisis, climate anxiety is characterized by symptoms such as fear, sleep disturbances, and obsessive thoughts. , which may interfere with daily life. .
“One of the big problems I think is that people feel like they're not allowed to feel some of the things that they're feeling,” Sharak said.
“That's where the mental health crisis happens, because I feel that way and I'm told I can't feel that way, but I can't change that feeling of hopelessness and I'm stuck.”
This feeling of powerlessness and gridlock is one of the dangers of climate anxiety, says Alexis Palmer-Fluevogue, a Vancouver-based public health researcher.
Experts say support groups can help, as can participating in activities that could be seen as taking action on climate change.
Some of the most “successful interventions” against climate anxiety are getting people involved at the local level, such as by participating in neighborhood cleanups or environmental rallies, Palmerfluevorg said.
“We need something that makes them feel like they have agency,” said Palmer Fluevorg, executive director of the Mental Health and Climate Change Alliance.
But climate action doesn't always feel like an antidote to despair, especially when it's already a part of life, said Cowan, a peer support group facilitator. . “Action-oriented” responses to climate anxiety can sometimes seem to ignore or downplay how we interact with our emotions in the first place, she said.
“Until we do this relational work better, we cannot face what is in front of us,” she said.
Last year's PHAC report noted that data on climate anxiety in Canada is limited, but there are some signs of how widespread it is.
Researchers at Lakehead University surveyed people aged 16 to 25 across Canada and found that four in 10 reported that their feelings about climate change were having a negative impact on their daily lives. It turned out that
This has left some parents wondering how to support their children through growing sentiments about climate change.
Severn Cullis-Suzuki, daughter of environmental activist David Suzuki and now executive director of the Suzuki Foundation, said her teenage son went through a “very dark” period of depression. She said stories about humanity's ecological destruction made him so overwhelmed that he no longer wanted to be human and wanted to be another species.
In his struggles, she could also see parts of her own childhood.
“When we teach our children to love the earth, to love nature, we are also teaching them to experience pain, because what we are doing to the earth right now is , because it's very painful,” she said.
Along with counseling, Charis Suzuki said one of the things that helped her son was community clean-ups, a way for him to see himself as part of the solution. When he was in a bad mood, heading to the beach or roadside to pick up trash would often quickly change his mood.
It also helped her sons, who are Haida through their father and grew up in the military, be exposed to a different story unfolding on the other side of the family.
“This story of recovery, this story of rebirth, this story of the rebirth of the (Haida) nation,” she said.
“What I want to convey to young people is that humanity is at a tipping point in its relationship with the natural world, especially when it comes to indigenous thinking. And amazingly, humans are holding onto examples of other ways of living. It means that society still exists.” ”
Gitanmarks First Nation climate policy researcher Janna Wale said she is regularly reminded of her community's resilience to climate change. Wehr, whose mother's side is also Cree-Métis, said her members have battled declining salmon populations, scorched huckleberry crops and an intensifying wildfire season.
She says the loss is something Indigenous communities have endured for a long time.
“I think for the most part, (communities) have been able to move past their fear of climate change and start thinking about ways to become more resilient,” said Wehr, who works at the Canadian Climate Institute. “We want to be part of building resilience for the next generation.”
