Eco-anxiety first appeared in a systematic report in 2017, when the American Psychological Association and ecoAmerica published “Mental Health and Our Changing Climate.” Since then, the age group most represented in climate-related psychological consultations has remained 16 to 24. It isn’t a diagnosis. In the scientific literature, the term can describe a physiological response of concern toward a real change and, in some cases, a condition closer to psychopathological suffering. Antonella Somma, professor of Clinical Psychology at UniSR, and Sarah Songhorian, professor of Moral Philosophy, examine it from two different angles: Somma through her clinical work with patients who struggle to sleep or concentrate because of environmental worry, Songhorian through the way climate change unsettles traditional categories of moral responsibility.
In the psychological literature, the term spans a wide spectrum: worry, tension and fear tied to climate change and its impact on everyday life. Somma draws a distinction that matters in clinical practice. On one side sits a physiological response, the concern that follows from observing a real change, such as the rising frequency of extreme weather events recorded over the last decade. On the other sits a variant closer to pathological anxiety, the kind that produces concrete difficulties in daily life.
What separates the two conditions isn’t the presence or absence of worry, but its intensity. «An anxious response isn’t pathological in itself», says Somma. «What makes it pathological is its intensity, duration and pervasiveness». How often it occurs, and how much it affects relationships, work and everything else that makes up a person’s life: for Somma, these are the indicators that shift eco-anxiety from an adaptive response to a clinical condition. There’s no sharp boundary, which is why it matters to watch closely for these signals: «a certain amount of worry is, in some sense, entirely physiological. The alarm should go off when eco-anxiety becomes an obstacle to everyday life, a pole around which a person’s whole experience starts to revolve».
A relevant technical distinction separates eco-anxiety from post-traumatic stress disorder. Someone who directly experiences an extreme weather event, a hurricane, a flood, can develop an acute stress reaction that, if it persists, falls under a distinct diagnostic category. Eco-anxiety as described in the literature concerns worry about climate change itself, not direct exposure to a traumatic event that climate change may eventually cause, a hurricane, for instance.
Online searches for “eco-anxiety” rose by 4,590% worldwide between 2018 and 2023, according to a Google Trends analysis reported by the BBC. Within psychology, the topic has a recent history. The American Psychological Association’s first report connecting climate and mental health dates back to 2010, but attention to eco-anxiety has grown mainly over the last decade, giving rise to dedicated working groups and systematic reviews. A recent paper in the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, Somma notes, offers an overview of the current state of research on mental health and climate change (Clayton & Crandon, 2025).
Two factors explain this growing attention. The first is demographic: requests for eco-anxiety counselling concentrate mainly among 16- to 24-year-olds, a generation drawn into global movements on the climate crisis, from Greta Thunberg to the youth organisations that have emerged in recent years. A 2021 study in The Lancet Planetary Health by Caroline Hickman and colleagues confirms this pattern. Surveying 10,000 young people aged 16 to 25 across ten countries, it found that nearly 60% described themselves as very or extremely worried about climate change, and more than 45% reported a negative impact on their daily functioning.
The second factor concerns clinical practice: psychologists have increasingly encountered patients whose worry about climate change came paired with a sense of being dismissed or minimised by the adults around them. This recognition gave rise to the first task forces, the first climate cafés and dedicated working groups, a further sign of growing clinical attention to the phenomenon.
Songhorian examines the same phenomenon from a different angle, that of moral philosophy, a field that has engaged with eco-anxiety for as long as it has engaged with the changing climate. «Climate change can be considered a “perfect moral storm” (Gardiner 2011) because of the very features of the problem. We’re dealing with a structural situation that emerges from the combination of countless different agents over time», she explains. «The usual tools of moral philosophy, designed to assign blame and responsibility to a single agent, turn out to be blunt in the face of a collective, diffuse phenomenon», she adds (Jamieson 2014).
This mismatch between moral tools and the nature of the problem has a distinct psychological effect. «When you can no longer attribute an action to a single agent or assign blame unambiguously, an unsettling sense of diffuse responsibility follows» (Young 2006), Songhorian notes.
Diffuse responsibility is compounded by a second theme, that of intergenerational justice: much of the consequence of today’s choices falls on people who don’t yet exist, and with whom none of the usual symmetry of everyday relationships applies. As Songhorian puts it, «some of the choices we make today will not only change the world future generations live in, but will change who those individuals actually are. It’s the well-known non-identity problem» (Parfit 1984). The topic, still the subject of an open and recent debate in moral philosophy, raises questions that range from climate justice to reproductive bioethics.
Clinically, the guiding criterion isn’t the presence of anxiety but its interference with daily life. «Does the thought of eco-anxiety, that worry, that fear, stop me from living a normal life? That means, for example, going to bed and being able to fall asleep the way I used to, going out with friends and family, spending time with the people around me and actually enjoying it without constantly thinking about climate change. If that’s happening, it can help to see a professional», explains Somma.
A 2025 meta-analysis in the journal Healthcare, drawing on a combined sample of more than 65,000 people across several countries, places the average level of eco-anxiety in the general population at 34.8 out of 100, a moderate level, with women scoring higher than men. Sleep is among the indicators most cited by the American Psychological Association, along with difficulty concentrating or studying, which is particularly common among younger age groups due to hyperfocus on climate issues.
A guiding principle for intervention, according to the American Psychological Association, is not to minimise the worry itself: doing so, especially with younger people, often causes more distress than the worry does on its own. The first step, Somma says, isn’t to reduce attention to the climate problem but to avoid automatically pathologising every form of concern. Clinical strategies draw on established psychotherapeutic models: cognitive behavioural therapy, for instance, can work by placing a specific worry, a heatwave, an alarming statistic, within a broader frame, rather than letting it become the only lens through which someone reads reality. A psychodynamic approach might instead focus on the meaning that particular external threat holds for the person.
Somma and Songhorian agree on one point: the goal isn’t to eliminate anxiety altogether. Songhorian illustrates this with a direct parallel, exam anxiety: «it helps to feel anxious before a good exam. Anxiety activates us, it can be a positive driver. What isn’t healthy is feeling pervasive anxiety, thinking that if the exam goes badly my life is ruined or I’m worthless as a person». The same holds for eco-anxiety: a degree of worry can be a useful signal, even an incentive to act, as long as it stays proportionate. It becomes a problem when it paralyses, when it stops someone from functioning instead of guiding their behaviour.
This distinction has a specific name in the eco-anxiety literature. Finnish researcher Panu Pihkala, among the first to systematise the study of the phenomenon, distinguishes between “practical” eco-anxiety and a paralysing form. The first works like an alarm: it signals that something needs attention, prompts people to gather information, weigh options and move toward a decision. It follows the same logic as the exam anxiety Songhorian describes, useful as long as it stays proportionate to the problem at hand. The second, paralysing form, fixes attention on the threat instead of directing it toward a response. It strips people of the ability to decide, which Pihkala considers the endpoint any functional form of eco-anxiety should ultimately reach.
Emotions tied to climate risk being used strategically in public debate. «Anxiety is a reasonable reaction, and it can be informed and even useful, but it’s just as manipulable as fear is», observes Songhorian, who compares eco-anxiety to other cases where collective emotional reactions activate unevenly: stronger for situations people can easily identify with, weaker for equally serious phenomena perceived as distant. Psychologist Paul Slovic documented this empirically in 2007, describing as the “identifiable victim effect” the tendency to react more intensely to single, recognisable victims than to collective phenomena, even when the latter are objectively more serious.
For Songhorian, the line between legitimate awareness-raising and strategic alarmism comes down to discernment: recognising when a worried reaction is proportionate to the problem, and when it’s being amplified for purposes that have little to do with understanding the phenomenon. That responsibility falls on individuals and on the institutions that communicate about climate change and the eco-anxiety it produces, universities included.
American Psychological Association & ecoAmerica, Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Implications, and Guidance, 2017.
Google Trends, global search data for the term “eco-anxiety” (2018–2023), reported by BBC/Time, November 2023.
American Psychological Association Task Force on the Interface Between Psychology and Global Climate Change, Psychology & Global Climate Change: Addressing a Multifaceted Phenomenon and Set of Challenges, 2010.
Clayton, S., Crandon, T., Climate Change and Mental Health. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 21:61–83, 2025.
Clayton, S., Manning, C., Krygsman, K., & Speiser, M., Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Implications, and Guidance, American Psychological Association, 2017.
Hickman, C., Marks, E., Pihkala, P., Clayton, S., Lewandowski, R. E., Mayall, E. E., Wray, B., Mellor, C., van Susteren, L., Climate Anxiety in Children and Young People and Their Beliefs About Government Responses to Climate Change: A Global Survey. The Lancet Planetary Health, 5(12), e863–e873, 2021.
Gallè, F. et al., Assessing the Presence of Eco-Anxiety in the General Population: A Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis and Meta-Regression. Healthcare, 13(21), 2025.
Pihkala, P., Anxiety and the Ecological Crisis: An Analysis of Eco-Anxiety and Climate Anxiety. Sustainability, 12(19), art. 7836, 2020.
Gardiner, S. M., A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change, Oxford University Press, 2011.
Jamieson, D., Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed — and What It Means for Our Future, Oxford University Press, 2014.
Young, I. M., Responsibility and Global Justice: A Social Connection Model. Social Philosophy and Policy, 23(1), 102–130, 2006.
Parfit, D., Reasons and Persons, Oxford University Press, 1984.
Slovic, P., “If I Look at the Mass I Will Never Act”: Psychic Numbing and Genocide. Judgment and Decision Making, 2(2), 79–95, 2007.