Pollution and climate change causing you stress or making you depressed? How to deal with eco-anxiety
- Consuming media reports about environmental problems, and worrying about climate change, makes some people stressed or depressed
- Tanja Wessels, who feels panicky in Hong Kong supermarkets because of all the plastic packaging, is spreading the word about the phenomenon of eco-anxiety
Tanja Wessels says an overwrapped coconut in a supermarket was the catalyst for one of the many bouts of eco-anxiety she has experienced.
“I was paralysed and dumbstruck, a million ideas going through my mind – I felt really panicky. It was a feeling I experienced a lot when I’d enter a supermarket and see so much plastic in use,” says the Hong Kong-based South African, who gives public talks on the topic, one she says is gaining growing attention.
According to a 2018 survey by the Hong Kong Playground Association, one in three young Hongkongers suffers from stress, anxiety or depression, while a 2016 study found more than one in 10 elderly people in Hong Kong displays signs of depression or even early symptoms of suicidal behaviour.
Like most places, the city has no data directly linking anxiety to stress about environmental issues. Eco-anxiety is not listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, considered the gold standard for mental health assessment.
The main research on the subject was a 2017 report by the American Psychological Association, which collaborated with environmental charity ecoAmerica to release Climate Change’s Toll On Mental Health, a study looking at the impact climate change can have on the human psyche.