Eco-anxiety (short for ecological anxiety), also known as eco-distress or climate anxiety, is a challenging emotional response to climate change and other environmental issues. Extensive studies have been done on ecological anxiety since 2007, and various definitions remain in use. The condition is not a medical diagnosis and is regarded as a rational response to the reality of climate change; however, severe instances can have a mental health impact if left without alleviation. There is also evidence that eco-anxiety is caused by the way researchers frame their research and their narratives o
via PubMed
Eco-anxiety (short for ecological anxiety), also known as eco-distress or climate anxiety, is a challenging emotional response to climate change and other environmental issues. Extensive studies have been done on ecological anxiety since 2007, and various definitions remain in use. The condition is not a medical diagnosis and is regarded as a rational response to the reality of climate change; however, severe instances can have a mental health impact if left without alleviation. There is also evidence that eco-anxiety is caused by the way researchers frame their research and their narratives of the evidence about climate change: if they do not consider the possibility of finding any solution to overcome climate change and for individuals to make a difference, they contribute to this feeling of powerlessness.
Eco-anxiety is an unpleasant emotion, though it can also motivate useful behavior such as the gathering of relevant information. Yet it can also manifest as conflict avoidance, or even be "paralyzing". Some people have reported experiencing so much anxiety and fear about the future with climate change that they choose not to have children. Eco-anxiety has received more attention after 2017, and especially since late 2018 with Greta Thunberg publicly discussing her own eco-anxiety.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).