Psychological Response to Environmental Problems

Psychological Response to Environmental Problems 1 Introduction i. What is “eco-anxiety”? Eco-anxiety––short for ecological anxiety and also known as climate anxiety––is a term that has been thrown around in the media as a kind of mental health crisis which is imposed by climate change and environmental problems. Scholars have defined ecoanxiety in various ways, such as having worries about climate change and its impacts on the future for “oneself, children, and later generations.” 1 Eco-anxiety may come with guilt about one’s place in the climate crisis and frustration about not being able to make a difference, or at least feel as if one is doing so. Eco-anxiety has also been tied to feelings of hopelessness, depression, fear, and frustration. It is a striking scale issue, where long-term, gradual changes in the environment can produce shocking and powerful emotions and thoughts, such as eco-anxiety. ii. Mental and emotional health effects of climate change More specifically, there is a growing body of research on “climate psychology,” or on the mental and emotional health effects of climate change. These effects can be acute, especially those related to trauma and/or shock that may come from experiencing climate change-induced disasters, or they may be more indirect, either stemming from these disasters or simply by hearing about prevalent environmental issues in the rest of the world. The American Psychological Association lists a great variety of acute mental health impacts that are associated with climate change. Environmental disasters such as hurricanes have a “high potential for immediate and severe psychological trauma from personal injury, injury or death of a loved one, damage to or loss of personal property… and disruption in or loss of livelihood.” 2 Trauma and shock may lead to disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), compounded stress, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and in extreme cases, suicidal ideation. 3 More chronic or indirect impacts may also come from experiencing or being aware of environmental problems. Stress and other acute mental health impacts can have effects on one’s physical health, such as sleep disorders, immune system suppression, and memory loss. 4 Additionally, warmer weather and an increase in heat 1 Clayton, S., Manning, C.M., Krygsman, K., and Speiser, M. (2017). Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Implications, and Guidance. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2017/03/mental-health-climate.pdf. 27. 2 Ibid, 22. 3 Ibid, 23. 4 Ibid, 22. 2 waves has been proven to be linked to an increase in aggression and violence. 5 In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, both domestic abuse and crime rates significantly increased in the regions most affected. 6 Other indirect impacts of environmental problems include strains on social relationships, especially when people are forced to migrate from their homes due to ecological disaster, and a general concern and fear for one’s community. 7 Finally, “sostalgia” is a term coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht to define the feeling of loss and sadness associated with losing a place that holds personal importance. 8 With rising sea levels and arable land crises around the world, forced migration has led to feelings of sostalgia, which may also come with lost senses of peace, autonomy, and identity. In extreme cases, sostalgia can lead to fatalism. iii. Vulnerable groups For the most vulnerable populations to climate change, compounded stress can serve as a “tipping point” for those who have fewer resources or are already experiencing other stressors. 9 The populations of most concern for mental health issues related to environmental problems include children and young people, parents, the elderly, first responders, those with already existing chronic mental or physical health issues, and disadvantaged communities, which could include environmental justice communities, people of color, low-income populations, and people without healthcare. 10 These populations are especially vulnerable to mental health effects of environmental problems, because they may be more proximate to the risk, or have less resources available to deal with issues which arise. Young people and students especially are the most at-risk for depression and anxiety related to environmental problems. iv. Climate stress in undergraduate students Researchers have conducted studies on college campuses to better understand how environmental problems affect students. Many of these studies focused on qualitative data collection, centered around focus groups and interviews to determine academic perspectives on mental health relationships to the climate crisis. 11 Some universities, such as the University of Oregon, have implemented “climate stress 5 Ibid, 24. Clayton, S., Manning, C.M., Krygsman, K., and Speiser, M. Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Implications, and Guidance. 30. 7 Ibid, 23. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid, 23. 10 Ibid. 11 Kelly, A. (2017). Eco-anxiety at university: Student experiences and academic perspectives on cultivating healthy emotional responses to the climate crisis. Independent Study Project Collection. 2642. https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection/2642. 6 3 therapy” programs, which are usually done in group therapy settings and focus on building connections with others who are feeling similar ways about environmental issues and may be experiencing mental health problems. 12 These sessions are not about “fixing” eco-anxiety or finding a way to solve the climate crisis, but rather to provide a space for students to talk about their emotions and experiences anc connect with people about these issues. With these programs, it is even more critical to acknowledge environmental justice communities and include the perspectives of marginalized communities and people of color. v. Research questions Given this background information, I wanted my project to focus on mental and emotional health issues related to environmental problems in students on my college campus, Boston University. I planned on designing a survey to measure this in some way, and I wrote research questions to guide the project along: 1. Are BU undergraduate students generally aware of ecoconcerns? 2. Are students worried, anxious, depressed, and/or stressed about environmental problems? If so, what do they do about these thoughts and emotions? 3. Do mental health concerns related to environmental damage interfere with students’ daily lives? 4. Has climate change impacted students directly, and/or a place that they care about? 5. Do students feel that studying sustainability exacerbates or alleviates their mental health symptoms related to environmental problems? Do professors of Earth & Environment classes help students psychologically prepare to absorb material? 6. Is there anything students wish they felt like doing to combat climate change, but don’t have the capacity to do? This final list of questions is not exhaustive, and my project ended up answering some better than others. Some questions the project answered were not even on this list to begin with. In general, I wanted to know, what’s going on with eco-anxiety at BU? Methods i. Psychology for beginners Though I am fairly well-versed in climate science and environmental analysis, at the beginning of this project I was a novice at any kind of psychology. My haphazard 12 Van Sistine, T. (2022). “Campuses are offering therapy for anxiety over climate change.” The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/09/12/ climate-change-stress-college-therapy-programs/. 4 Googling about how to create a psychological survey was not helpful, as there were many words I didn’t understand and rules for language and wording that seemed overly complicated. I realized that I needed to turn to experts. First, I talked to my mother, Kelly Facciola, a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW). She explained to me the importance of diagnostic criteria, or signs, symptoms, and tests which are used to diagnose an individual with a certain mental disorder. Diagnostic criteria for anxiety, or generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), is definitely different from diagnostic criteria for eco-anxiety or related mental health concerns to environmental issues, which have probably not even been officially developed. This is why, for my survey, it was important to always ask if the anxiety that participants were feeling was related to climate change/environmental problems, rather than having an underlying anxiety disorder such as GAD which may cause similar symptoms to ecoanxiety. A common phrase that mental health professionals use within diagnostic criteria is “interference with daily life,” where given anxiety is causing disruption to an individual’s day-to-day functioning. However, it is difficult to ascertain whether an anxiety which interferes with daily life is caused by environmental issues rather than only underlying mental health concerns, as there is little research on specific diagnostic criteria to accompany eco-anxiety. This was an important consideration I had to take when beginning to create my survey. My mom and I also discussed Boston specifically. There is a recent Boston Globe article which involved interviews of Boston residents and their feelings about the environment, and we both noted that the feelings seemed more like something called survivor guilt rather than acute trauma. 13 Survivor guilt, in this case, is the idea that Bostonians may not be the people most directly impacted by climate change (comparatively, think of wildfires in California and hurricanes in Florida), but they may have feelings of guilt, hopelessness, and sadness from hearing about issues in other parts of the world but not being able to experience, or do anything about these issues. Survivor guilt was something I wanted to look at in BU students, a population which is also complicated by a great majority of out-of-state and international students who come from different environments. A geographical analysis would have been interesting, but definitely too out-of-reach to tackle for this project. ii. Psychological survey methods Now that I knew some psychology basics and what people in Boston may be feeling, I turned to another expert who could help me with creating a survey. I met with Dr. Andrea Mercurio, Senior Lecturer in the Psychology Department at BU. Dr. 13 Teitell, B. (2021). “Climate change and mental health: the inconvenient truth.” Boston Globe. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/07/30/science/climate-disasters-are-mounting-so-is-our-anxiety/. 5 Mercurio was extremely influential in the creation of this project and I cannot thank her enough for meeting with me and guiding me in how exactly to make a survey. Firstly and likely most importantly, we discussed the importance of including validated measures in a survey. Dr. Merucrio assured me that it is much more difficult, less accurate, and less effective, to create an entire survey on your own, and that many researchers use items that have already been written and tested on a sample––this is a validated measure, or an item which has been psychometrically validated, peerreviewed, and generally deemed to be a fair representation of a sample. Validated measures are incredibly important when dealing with topics like anxiety, which is about thoughts, feelings, emotions, and subjectivity. When using validated measures in a survey, the researcher can be more certain that the information they are gathering is reliable and valid. Dr. Mercurio gave me a few published research papers which included validated measures on eco-anxiety, the most significant to this project being Clayton and Karazsia’s “Development and validation of a measure of climate change anxiety,” published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology in 2020. 14 This study affirmed the idea I had from my discussion with my mom about differentiating anxiety symptoms related to underlying issues from eco-anxiety symptoms, where this study’s validated measures provided a way around this difficult distinction, as the language necessary to make it was already built into the items. 15 Dr. Mercurio and I also discussed goal-setting for what I wanted the survey to accomplish. We agreed that it should have at least 50 participants, and if I wanted to differentiate between Earth & Environment students and students in all other departments, I would need at least 30 participants in each group to be able to make statistical comparisons. Dr. Mercurio assured me that I could accomplish this in at least a week of data collection, especially if I disseminated it effectively. Together, we also solidified my research questions to hone in on what I really wanted to focus on. Since the next step for me in this process was actually creating the survey, Dr. Mercurio finally gave me a list of rules to follow when writing it. Again, she emphasized the importance of validated measures, but also acknowledged that I would probably want to write some of my own questions in addition to those items. She went over formatting tips: break up your questions into blocks and pages so participants don’t have to scroll through the entire survey, make sure there is no potential for anyone to misinterpret your questions (keep them as clear and concise as possible), keep openended questions towards the end, and keep it as short as possible to get a higher response rate. From this meeting, I was able to finally begin the process of writing a survey. iii. Survey creation and revision 14 Clayton, S., and Karazsia, B. T. (2020). Development and validation of a measure of climate change anxiety. Journal of Environmental Psychology. 69, 101434. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101434. 15 Ibid. 6 I wrote the PREP survey in Qualtrics using a combination of validated measures and my own items. The survey is split into 6 blocks, as follows: 1. Block 1 expressed the required disclaimers and information about the survey, the investigators, and the reservation of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at BU to review survey records. This block also ensured that all participants were fulltime, undergraduate students at BU (the inclusion criteria) and collected information about college and major/minors of participants. 2. Block 2 focused on environmental awareness of participants, asking which environmental problems most concerned them and how often they engaged with environment-related material and media inside and outside of class. 3. Block 3 imposed all of the validated measures of Clayton and Karazsia (2020), on eco-anxiety, asking participants about the intensity of certain emotions they felt when hearing about climate change, and rating participant agreement on a scale from 1 to 5 of statements about personal relationships to environmental issues and mental health, effects of climate change on participants’ wellbeing, and individuals’ sustainability actions. 4. Block 4 only displayed questions concerning Earth & Environment (E&E) classes if participants answered “Yes” to having taken a class in the E&E Department. These questions were my own items, edited by my peers and Professor Reibstein. Block 4 asked E&E class-takers if their E&E professors helped them “psychologically process the information they receive” about environmental issues, a phrase taken from Kelly (2017). 16 In this block I also asked for agreement with statements about if studying the environment either alleviates or exacerbates mental health concerns related to environmental problems. Finally, I asked all participants, including those who had not taken E&E classes, if they had ever sought support on or off campus for eco-anxiety, and if they had heard of “climate stress therapy.” 5. Block 5 was about taking action. I wrote a series of statements for participants to rate agreement for, about if taking action against environmental problems helps with their mental health, and if connection to nature helps them combat stress. Finally, I opened the floor for free responses to two questions: “What do you personally do to take action against environmental problems?” and “Is there anything you wish you felt like doing, but don’t?” 6. Block 6 provided resources for support because I understood that the subject material can be heavy. I also provided my contact information and a thank you to participants for taking the time to complete the survey. 16 Kelly, A. Eco-anxiety at university: Student experiences and academic perspectives on cultivating healthy emotional responses to the climate crisis. 7 The survey would not have been possible without the help of the EE538 class and Professor Reibstein, who all workshopped it with me, proposed changes I should make to it, and continued to support its journey throughout the semester. I am very thankful for their help in making it the best it could be. iv. Institutional Review Board approval Before submitting the survey to the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at BU, I was required to do the Human Subjects Protection Training through the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI). After the online training which took a few days for me to complete, I got certified to conduct a human subject research study. I submitted an exempt review to the BU Charles River Campus IRB, because I was making the survey completely anonymous and confidential, and there was minimal risk involved in the research as a whole. After a few edits and turnarounds I had to make on the survey and various application materials, PREP was approved by Shayne Deal, Senior IRB Analyst. From here, I was able to begin the data collection process! v. Survey dissemination The PREP survey was available to BU undergraduate students via Qualtrics from November 14 to 22 of 2022, for a total of 10 days. I disseminated the survey through emails to professors and faculty, posts on social media, flyers with a QR code link to the survey spread around campus buildings, and through clubs, friends, and word-of mouth. I closed the survey on November 22nd, the last day of classes before Thanksgiving Break. After all of the results were in, I proceeded to analyze the data and draw conclusions. Results & Discussion i. Participant numbers PREP had 125 total participants, 56 of those participants being students who had taken a class in the Earth & Environment Department. Students from all colleges at BU were represented with at least one participant. 8 ii. Ecococerns and emotions The top three environmental problems that most worried participants were, in order, climate change, pollution, and public health problems. The environmental problems that ranked the lowest in participant worries were ozone layer depletion and soil degradation. The highest-scoring emotions that participants experience when hearing about, reading about, and/or thinking about environmental problems were, in order, frustrated, angry, and scared. The lowest-scoring emotions from this item were alone and isolated. So, BU students may not be feeling too alone about this issue. iii. Validated measurements The most agreed-with statements for the validated measures from Clayton and Karazsia (2020) were many of the action items, like “I turn off lights,” “I recycle,” “I try to reduce my behaviors that contribute to climate change.” A great majority of participants either agreed or strongly agreed with these statements, perhaps because they were the most objective and simplistic to answer. Other statements which trended towards answers of agree and strongly agree were “I wish I behaved more sustainably,” and “I feel guilty if I waste energy,” both implying a certain level of guilt related to one’s place in the climate crisis. Another statement with this level of agreement among participants was “I seek out information about climate change in the media,” showing this sample keeps informed. Finally, results also showed fairly strong agreement with statements about personal proximity to climate change, with high averages on the agreement spectrum for the statements, “I have noticed a change in a place that is important to me due to climate change,” “I believe I can do something to help address the problem of climate change,” “I know someone who has been directly affected by climate change,” and “I have been directly affected by climate change.” The least agreed-with statements in the same set of validated measures were more of the severe eco-anxiety measures, such as “I have nightmares about climate change,” “My friends say I think about climate change too much,” and “I feel uncomfortable when someone brings up climate change in conversation.” So, even though participants may feel strong emotions about environmental issues from Block 1, they do not tend to be displaying the most severe symptoms of eco-anxiety, or mental health frustrations stemming directly from climate change. I used these validated measures mostly to test the waters and determine what BU students are generally feeling, rather than provide any strict diagnoses. I would not want to make generalizations based only on this data. Thus, though participants tended to disagree with some of the most intense mental health statements related to climate change, this should not downplay the fact that these issues definitely affect the emotions 9 and wellbeing of students, and some are affected more than others. The validated measures primarily allow me to draw two conclusions: (1) that the action items/more objective statements have the highest agreement among the sample, and (2) that most of the sample is not experiencing any extreme or severe symptoms of eco-anxiety. iv. E&E classes The questions for students who had taken Earth & Environment classes demonstrated a wide variety of results. The response for “My professors in my E&E classes help me psychologically process the information that I receive about environmental problems” was fairly split down the middle, with most participants responding with “some” to “most” of their professors. The statements about content warnings and discussing mental health with professors trended more towards none or few of participants’ E&E professors: ● “My professors give content warnings before discussing sensitive material related to environmental problems.” ● “I have discussed the mental health impacts of studying the environment with an E&E professor.” Results about participants’ experiences in E&E classes and how those classes affect their mental health and perceptions of their peers also were mixed: ● “I possess the necessary tools and learning materials to psychologically process the information given to me in my E&E classes.” 10 ● “I think I am more at risk for mental illness related to environmental problems than my peers who have never taken a class in the E&E department.” ● “Studying/taking classes in E&E helps me with my mental struggles related to environmental problems.” On the last item about if studying the environment helps with mental health, many participants neither agreed nor disagreed, but there was somewhat of a trend towards agreeing that studying the environment could help. These results generally emphasize that there are a great variety of feelings and beliefs within E&E students, and everyone may approach this topic differently, especially those who directly engage with environment-related material often. v. Final quantitative data notes For the last section of questions I wrote myself, there are some interesting data points to highlight. Firstly, 83.5% of participants had not heard of climate stress 11 therapy, demonstrating that the concept is not very known about among students. 71% of participants responded “Maybe/I don’t know” when asked if their college campus provided resources for environment-related mental health problems. 94% of participants either agreed or strongly agreed that they wished they did more to take action against environmental problems––again, these action items are very popular among participants. Finally, 86% of participants either agreed or strongly agreed that experiencing nature helps them combat their stress and worries, showing that nature could be a treatment to any emotional and mental health problems, related to climate change or not. vi. Free response questions For the free response question “What do you personally do to take action against environmental problems?”, participants answered with a variety of actions, such as recycling, using reusable bags and water bottles, voting, advocating for politicians which support the environment, staying informed about environmental issues by reading the news, conserving water and electricity, walking or biking, eating plant-based, and studying sustainability in college. One participant noted, “I do everything I can reasonably do,” and another, “Hopefully I will go on to influence policy action through my degree.” A participant also noted their place in the issue: “I have attended a few protests regarding climate activism as well. I know these are small steps but these are some of the changes I have made since beginning to worry about climate change.” For the free response question “Is there anything you wish you felt like doing, but don’t?”, many participants responded by expressing their wishes that individual sustainable actions felt more important, or “less futile.” On this topic, one participant remarked, “Mostly, a lot of the things I wish I was doing are things in which I feel structures are against me.” Participants also responded to this question with specific action items, like volunteering more often, or going plastic-free, or eating more seasonally and locally. Some participants took a dreary tone: “I want to be as sustainable as possible [in] every way, but it’s difficult,” “I wish I felt like I had more control over the issue. At the end of the day even if every normal person behaved normally, the big companies would still produce enough waste to continue harming the environment.” These free responses show that students do have something to say about environmental issues and their place in the current environmental movement. Many have their own opinions on the relative importance of small individual actions in the context of the whole world. Most participants wish they did more, but are unable to at this point in their lives. It seems as though frustration with the way the world is tackling the climate crisis is causing feelings of inadequacy with how little an individual does to save the environment, or hopelessness in the comparison of how much one does to what they believe the rest of the world should be doing. 12 Conclusions PREP tells us that Boston University undergraduate students are aware of, and may be experiencing, environment-related mental health stressors. Studying the environment, connecting with nature, and taking sustainable actions can all help students alleviate stress and concerns over climate change and their place in the crisis. There is a general need for more education and awareness on campus to provide support for these issues. Results suggest that students could benefit from groups or counseling such as climate stress therapy as a way to connect with others who are feeling similar to them and to discuss healthy coping mechanisms when dealing with eco-anxiety. In combining environmental studies and psychology through a research survey, PREP introduced the BU community to student concern for environmental issues which may be impacting their mental and emotional health and wellbeing. 13