Nicole Thornton is planning to create an online support network for people suffering what she calls "climate depression". Photo: Justin McManus
Nicole Thornton remembers the exact moment her curious case of depression became too real to ignore. It was five years ago and the environmental scientist – a trained biologist and ecologist – was writing a rather dry PhD on responsible household water use.
After a two-decade career in green awareness and eco-tourism, Thornton was happy to finally be researching her pet project at the University of Technology in Sydney – but she was also on edge.
“We can be very sure that many people in the field of climate change are distressed – highly distressed – and it can have a significant psychosocial impact on their wellbeingSusie Burke
Thornton had always been easily upset by apathy towards, and denial of, environmental issues. But now she began to notice an oddly powerful personal reaction to “the small stuff” – like people littering, or neighbours chopping down an old tree.
Susie Burke, a psychologist at Al Gore's Climate Reality Project in Melbourne. Photo: James Thomas
She found herself suddenly and strongly enveloped by unfamiliar feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, anger and anxiety.
“It’s strange. Sometimes you just don’t feel you’re making headway in the time you’ve got, before it’s too late for the planet,” Thornton says. “All these little things weigh you down, and then the big stuff breaks you.”
The United Nations was about to hold its 2009 climate change conference in Copenhagen, and Thornton felt she had a personal investment in it. She, like many thousands of activists and scientists and green campaigners, had high hopes that a new and robust version of the Kyoto agreement would be created in Denmark.
Climate change and global warming are causing stress to scientists. Photo: Glenn Campbell
“But the reality was a massive, epic failure of political will. It broke me,” she says. “The trigger point was actually watching grown men cry. They were senior diplomats from small islands, begging larger countries to take action so that their nations would not drown with the rising seas.”
Thornton pauses, takes a breath. “It still gets me, five years later. That’s when I lost hope that we were able to save ourselves from self-destruction. That’s when I lost hope that we would survive as a species. It made me more susceptible to what I call ‘climate depression’.”
If the term “climate depression” is new to you, it should be. No such condition is recognised by the world of psychiatry. There is no formalised syndrome. If there is a disorder of this kind, it has not been acknowledged by the medical community. Thornton herself wonders whether the moniker is misleading – whether “despair and disempowerment” might be better.
Yet no matter what the nomenclature (some refer to the problem as “ecoanxiety”, while others talk about “doomer depression” and “apocalypse fatigue”), despondency over a what many believe is societal failure to adequately acknowledge or address environmental issues has become a line of psychological inquiry.
Several experts suggest that the overall intersection of mental health and climate change is one we ignore at our peril.
Researchers have conducted extensive studies into increased “climate anxiety” levels and hyper-vigilance in communities formerly stricken by droughts and floods and bushfires. (One professor coined the term “solastalgia” to describe the “existential distress” felt by residents after a negative environmental change in the place they call home.)
Journals have published papers with titles such as “The Debilitating Disease of Climate Alarmism” and “A Climate of Suffering”.
Six years ago, a dehydrated 17-year-old boy was brought into the Royal Children’s Hospital, refusing to drink water. He believed having a drink would somehow contribute to the global shortage of potable water, and became the first diagnosed case of “climate change delusion”.
Thornton concedes the odd-sounding nature of her own problem, too. Nevertheless, she sought counselling immediately – recognising the severity of her own particular (and admittedly peculiar) collapse.
“Every time I talked about environmental issues, I would start crying, which I think is a really unusual response,” she says. “I’m a scientist, so I like to break things down – to drivers and causes – but I was confused. I had never heard of anyone who had something like this. I tried talking to some of my colleagues and friends, and I felt like an idiot. I felt quite stupid talking about it. It was a lonely and steep, frustrating learning curve.”
Susie Burke, a senior psychologist with the Australian Psychological Society, has done extensive work on the mental impact of climate change. Burke understands Thornton’s confusion, but also points out that she is by no means alone.
Only last month, Burke made a presentation on mental health and the environment as part of the Climate Reality Project, hosted by former US vice-president Al Gore at Rod Laver Arena and attended by hundreds of committed by weary campaigners.
“We can be very sure that many people in the field of climate change are distressed – highly distressed – and it can have a significant psychosocial impact on their wellbeing,” Burke said. “If you’re feeling stress, anger, guilt, anxiousness or hopelessness, it has effects on your life. Depression becomes a real risk.”
Burke points out that disengagement – “switching off from the cause and becoming passive” – is an additional and bona fide concern for leaders within the green community, such is the crippling power of the threat perceived by people like Thornton, and the slow rate of change they observe.
“Think of the overwhelming evidence they have. And then imagine the retraction or repeal of important legislation, or the watering down of bills. Or the green light that was just given to the Carmichael open cut mine in Queensland – granted by the environment minister,” Burke says. “There is also some ‘vicarious distress’ that comes with knowing what is happening to people here and around the world as a result of climate change. It can have an effect on your well being.”
Burke has gone so far as to release “tip sheets” to help people face the reality of climate change without a sense of dread – a kind of step-by-step guide for managing feelings and changing behaviour.
She and her colleague, Dr Grant Blashki of the Nossal Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne, have even been called on by organisations that need help dealing with the overall melancholy affecting their troops.
Adam Majcher, of Australian Conservation Foundation, reached out to Burke and Blashki around the time of the failure in Copenhagen (which is acknowledged as an emotional nadir for green activists).
“We were seeing signs of a particular burden on our advocates,” says Majcher. “There was a shift in the moods and attitudes, with people becoming quite despondent, less engaged. Many people usually talkative were going a little quiet. And there was definitely a significant decline in activity in the program, along with frustrations playing out in isolation, anger.”
Burke and Blashki were brought in to deliver a presentation about recognising anxieties in yourself and others, and tips for those in an unhealthy frame of mind. Materials were sent to advocates around the country, so that they could recognise warning signs and look after themselves, or seek professional help.
But other experts point out that we should not so easily or readily confuse helplessness with depression – nor should we mistake correlation for causation.
Professor Helen Berry, of the University of Canberra, has done extensive research into the health impacts of climate change, and says it is “unlikely” there is any such thing as climate depression.
Australians are worried about climate change, she says, and some people in climate change activism would no doubt be depressed by inaction on the issue. (Berry herself sometimes feels down about the lack of progress.)
“But it’s not the climate change component that’s causing the problem,” she says. “It’s the repeated failures themselves which make people feel helpless, which is a known cause of depression.”
Berry mentions that research has also shown that certain types of people are drawn to political activism, including people with or prone to mental health problems, so she is cautious about making “what may well be spurious associations”.
“This doesn’t mean people aren’t worried about climate change and their worries don’t need to be taken seriously. Quite the opposite,” Berry says, “but that we should not pathologise or individualise, and we should be careful what conclusions we draw.”
In this light, the condition that Thornton faced is much closer to what the psychologist Martin Seligman described as “learned helplessness” – something that could emerge from the repeated and uncontrollable failures of campaigning for a cause.
Thornton’s story of repeated blows, before giving up, is similar to the tale of the “cadaver dogs” at ground zero in New York.
After the terrorist attacks turned the twin towers to rubble, a team of German shepherds, yellow Labradors, golden retrievers and Rottweilers worked in shifts roaming canyons of wreckage, trying to locate survivors by vibration and body parts by smell.
The dogs would bark when they found their quarry, and then point with an extended paw when they identified a person – alive or dead.
But they were trained to perform this work for those times when people go missing in nature – when small groups are caught in avalanches, or individuals get lost on remote hikes. Their cold canine noses were not accustomed to sniffing out so much death, day after day. And so the gruesome job in New York had an effect. The dogs began to lose their appetite, and then weight. Some shed fur. Others got upset stomachs and grew visibly despondent over their grim charge. They stopped playing with other dogs. Faced with a barrage of failure, the dogs became depressed.
Thornton sees the obvious parallel between those pooches and her own experience: working a job where not only are the stakes considered so high, but where bad news and losses are more common than good news and gains.
“And we don’t acknowledge our grief and despair,” she says. “We stick our head in the sand, and it bubbles up and leaks out in various ways. We need to acknowledge it and remove ourselves from it. You’re always there and there is no break. You think you are doing well, but your body and mind need a break more than you think you do.”
Thornton, 41, is currently on a break – of sorts. She is part of a fellowship program with the Centre for Sustainability Leadership, with 49 other aspiring change agents. She is using her time in that program to create an online health and wellbeing hub, catered to cases like her own.
“Peers have talked to me about burnout, anxiety, panic attacks, complete disengagement, and frustration leading to despair and, when you think about it, this stuff is always around you in the environmental field. It’s notorious. They get so involved, and they’re so passionate and they don’t take breaks. I want to start a conversation that anyone feeling sensitive or susceptible can join. These stories are a really powerful motivator for me. There’s a real need to talk about this.”
That’s exactly what Thornton did last week, taking part in a retreat with the other fellowship candidates, near Strath Creek in the Victorian high country. The week was a chance to breathe again, to feel re-energised and experience some hope.
Back at ground zero, when the cadaver dogs were down, volunteers and firefighters took to hiding in the mountains of debris, thereby giving the dogs an opportunity to “rescue” a live person, in the hope it might lift their spirits. The retreat has been a similarly transformative experience – offering a little bit of positivity, to punctuate the gloom.
“That’s the same as me. You lose hope, and when you get your hope back, it keeps you functioning,” says Thornton. “I feel like I have that kernel of an idea, and now with the resources and motivation and confidence, skills and strength – and access to like-minded people – that I can move forward and have an impact in the world.”