The term “eco-anxiety” has recently emerged on the medical and media scenes. Here are the symptoms that constitute it.
- The Observatory of Corporate Social Responsibility (Orse) has published a new guide on eco-anxiety.
- The document lists 11 symptoms that are caused by eco-anxiety.
- “Eco-anxiety can be defined as a form of pre-traumatic stress in the face of environmental and climate change,” says Orse.
In a new guide, the Observatory of Corporate Social Responsibility (Orse) lists the characteristic symptoms of eco-anxiety and the questions associated with them.
1/ The feeling of helplessness
“Faced with the ecological disaster of the planet, I feel completely overwhelmed, what can I do?”
“How can we act today if it is no longer possible to reverse the trend in the state of the planet?”
2/ The feeling of loss of control
“What is the scope of my individual action in the face of all this collective degradation?”
3/ The feeling of loss of meaning
“What’s the point of continuing to live if the earth is in such bad shape and everything is ruined?”
4/ Fear of the future
“What kind of world will my children grow up in?”
“What disasters will I witness in my lifetime?”
5/ Sadness
“I feel immense sorrow at the state of the planet.”
6/ Regret
“Why did we let the world become this way?”
7/ Anxiety disorders
Chronic anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia.
8/ Questioning about the child project
“If we have a child today, what world will he live in tomorrow?”
9/ Moral suffering
10/ Guilt
11/ Loneliness
“I feel alone in society, I feel like I’m out of step.”
What is eco-anxiety?
“Eco-anxiety can be defined as a form of pre-traumatic stress in the face of environmental and climate change” indicates the Orse. “This is prospective suffering, triggered by a projection into the future and linked to ecological awareness,” adds the institution.
What is new in this form of anxiety is not the feeling itself but the cause that generates it. “It comes from a feeling of helplessness in the face of an increasingly uncertain future that we cannot control.” continues Orse. “It differs from the great fears that have crossed the history of humanity (nuclear war, the Y2K bug, etc.) because it is based on scientific and empirical rationale,” he ends.
What is the impact of eco-anxiety?
A study published in December 2021 revealed that 72% of respondents were worried about climate change, 30% angry and 26% demoralized.
Figures that are not far from those reported a few days earlier by a major study in the Lancet: 75% of young people aged 16 to 25 considered the future frightening and half of them simply no longer had faith in humanity.