What Is Eco-Anxiety? Experts Comment On The Fear Driven by Climate Change

You must have heard of social anxiety, travel anxiety, or exam anxiety. However, with climate change now directly impacting human lives, eco-anxiety is also becoming increasingly common. No aspect of our lives, including education, future planning, agriculture, and emotional well-being, is distant from the climate crisis, and eco-anxiety, also known as climate stress, is a ramification of that.

Eco-anxiety refers to an emotional suffering specifically driven by worries about climate change and the degradation of the planet. To gain more insights about how it differs from a clinical anxiety disorder and who is most impacted, we spoke to Mr S. Giriprasad, Psychologist at Aster Whitefield Hospital, Bengaluru and Dr Nikhil Jain, Program Lead & Research Fellow at the Centre for Mental Health Law & Policy, Indian Law Society, Pune. Continue reading to know what both the experts share with us.

What is Eco-Anxiety?

The climate crisis is no longer a future risk; it is happening right here, impacting almost every person on the planet in some way or other. While some may choose to ignore the disastrous situation just around the corner, many are deeply worried about its consequences. This worry often leads individuals into anxiety about their future and the future of the planet.

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Mr S Giriprasad says, “Eco-anxiety has not been identified as a formal mental illness but rather as a healthy, expected reaction to a person's knowledge of the planet’s dangers, including severe weather events, the extinction of species, and global pollution.”

Dr Jain describes eco-anxiety as distress, worry, fear, grief, anger, or helplessness related to ecological degradation and a chronic fear of environmental doom.

“Eco-anxiety can be adaptive when it motivates preparation, problem-solving, and community engagement to induce change. It becomes clinically concerning when it is persistent, impairing, and rigid, or when it contributes to a functional decline such as sleep disruption, an inability to work or study, and social avoidance,” he further states.

How is it Different From Other Anxiety Disorders?

Eco-anxiety is not a formal psychiatric diagnosis in standard classification systems such as the ICD-10 or DSM-5. Contrary to other anxiety disorders, where the source of the problem typically involves individual phobias, traumatic personal events, or chemical imbalances, the source of eco-anxiety is the real, tangible events of climate change.

Mr S. Giriprasad notes that while someone with a traditional anxiety disorder may experience despair or grief in relation to personal triggers, those with eco-anxiety experience these emotions in relation to the state of the Earth.

“Anxiety disorders are defined by symptom clusters, duration, and impairment. While eco-anxiety may overlap in symptoms, its trigger and meaning are specifically linked to ecological threats, and many people experience it without meeting the criteria for a clinical disorder,” Dr Jain underlines.

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Common Signs Climate Change is Affecting Your Mental Health

Experts divide these signs into emotional-cognitive and physiological-behavioural categories. Here are common signs shared by Mr S Giriprasad and Dr Nikhil Jain:

Emotional and Cognitive Signs:

• Sadness regarding the loss of biodiversity that has already occurred.
• Anger towards systems or policies that do not protect the environment.
• Guilt about personal lifestyle choices contributing to the problem.
• Intrusive thoughts and feelings of dread about the future.

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Physiological and Behavioural Signs:

• Troubled sleep patterns or insomnia.
• Difficulty focusing on daily tasks.
• Emotional exhaustion from the mental load of the climate crisis.
• Increased irritability.
• Feeling overwhelmed by the 24-hour news cycle and alarmist social media content.
• Social withdrawal is a coping mechanism against feelings of helplessness.

Dr Nikhil Jain adds that in extreme cases, particularly following displacement or loss of livelihood due to floods, cyclones, or droughts, individuals may exhibit acute stress reactions, depression, PTSD symptoms, and substance misuse.

Finding Balance Between Staying Informed and Maintaining Peace

Staying informed is crucial, yet emotional boundaries are necessary. Constant exposure to negative information not just erodes mental resilience but also makes you feel that no hope is left. To maintain inner peace and positivity in such circumstances, our experts suggest the following:

• Limiting climate news to specific times of the day to prevent constant mental strain.
• Avoid doom-scrolling through alarmist material and only trust high-signal sources such as scientific assessments and peer-reviewed journals.
• Transform helplessness into purpose by volunteering, reducing your personal carbon footprint, or joining local environmental groups.
• Actively reject thoughts that total collapse is inevitable, as cognitive research shows that extreme fatalism often leads to psychological avoidance and disengagement.
• Grounding exercises and time spent in nature can help restore emotional balance, reinforcing that while the problem is global, meaningful change begins with small, personal steps.

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Who Are Most Impacted?

Dr Jain explains, “Evidence points to differential vulnerability based on exposure and adaptive capacity, rather than a uniform effect.” However, he also shares who is most likely to impact and have this climate crisis fear:

• Youth surveys show high levels of climate worry affecting the regular functioning of children and young adults.
• Those facing displacement, crop failure, or water insecurity due to hazards like heatwaves or floods are also most impacted by Eco-anxiety.
• Farmers, fishers, and Indigenous groups whose identities and cultures are tied to the ecosystem are also among the most impacted communities.
• People with limited access to healthcare, living in extreme conditions in the Himalayas or drought-prone areas, insecure housing, or those with existing mental health issues.

Bottomline

As experts suggest, being completely ignorant or extremely fatalistic both have negative effects on our mental well-being. Eco-anxiety is the result of observing how fast our planet is changing, from melting glaciers to frequent forest fires.

While those depending on nature for their livelihood are most impacted, everyone is a stakeholder in this situation. However, the positive side is that one can manage this anxiety by balancing their consumption of facts and transitioning that energy into purposeful action.