It is well established that climate change poses significant threats to human health and well-being. Young people, who face a future burdened by climate change, will be among those most affected. It is understandable that increasing awareness of these threats brings increasing distress. Many young people will experience anxiety and other distressing emotions in relation to climate change, but some may experience a level of anxiety that threatens their mental health. In order to provide help needed by young people who are affected, there is a need to further understand the nature, predictors and consequences of climate distress. This chapter thus provides an overview of what we know and what we need to know about young people who experience climate-related distress.

This chapter explores the relationship between climate distress – particularly fear and sadness about climate change – and clinical-level psychiatric symptoms in children and young people, focusing on pediatric anxiety and depression. In response to societal tendencies to under- or overplay the mental health risks of climate emotional impacts, it describes the spectrum of healthy and unhealthy pediatric anxiety and depression, the role that chronic stress and direct climate impacts play on child and adolescent brain development and clinical syndromes, and the ways that responding emotionally to climate change can influence youth identity development and emotional strength. The chapter provides a template for how to assess young people’s climate emotions clinically, offering several detailed case descriptions to illustrate how stress, psychopathology, psychological and brain development, and climate emotions can weave together to influence the sum of a young person’s presentation. As parents’ and other adults’ responses play a key role in whether these emotions evolve to a clinical level, it also suggests some best practices for interacting with climate-distressed youth to minimize poor clinical outcomes.

Supportive educators can aid young people in channelling negative emotions about climate change in healthy, adaptive ways. However, globally only a small minority (13 percent) of young people in school have been asked to consider their feelings about climate change and most teachers lack training and confidence to deliver climate change education. The first portion of this chapter provides an overview of climate change education and explores young people’s climate distress in educational settings, with an emphasis on institutional betrayal. The second portion presents case studies and qualitative data from semi-structured interviews conducted with four leading practitioners whose approaches to climate change education acknowledge and support the mental health implications for young people. Finally, themes identified from thematic analysis of the interviews are presented, and key insights for good practice in climate change education are provided.

Clinical work with climate-distressed youth using a developmental framework is described, from two theoretical perspectives: acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and psychodynamic psychotherapy. General principles of climate-informed therapy are delineated, and case examples illustrate the use of theory in practice. Interventions involving the family, psychoeducation, resilience-building skills, developing a conscious relationship to nature, engaging in environmentally beneficial actions, increasing the tolerance for uncertainty, and developing career goals around the needs of a changing environment and society are described. The authors discuss the need for the clinician to prepare themselves for the challenges of this work, which include one’s own reactions of emotional distress when youth bring this topic up. Ways the clinician can model responses to climate distress are discussed, including staying informed about the multiple unfolding, intersecting crises, and tolerating a multitude of emotional reactions attendant to this urgent situation. The clinician is encouraged to have and use play materials that can be adapted to environmental themes. The importance of providing a secure attachment relationship to use as a base in “weathering the storms” of the climate crisis is emphasized.

Emerging research suggests that young people are more likely to experience climate distress than adults, yet there is little understanding of the factors that influence young people’s experience of climate distress. This chapter uses a social-ecological framework to identify individual, physical, and systemic influences from micro (e.g., family, peers), meso (school, community), techno (technology and media), exo (government), and macro (culture and society) systems on youth climate distress. Factors that may exacerbate climate distress or protect youth well-being are highlighted, as well as recommendations and key considerations for supporting the mental health of young people.

This chapter discusses the role of creativity, narrative inquiry and meaning-making in making sense of systemic global crises and affirms their important role to play in helping young people deal with climate distress. Drawing on field work with the Dark Mountain Project, a cultural movement that grew out of the Dark Mountain manifesto published in 2009, it also describes how narrative repositioning can offer possibilities for opening up new ways of thinking and being. Using human–nature relationships as the focus for creative practice and inquiry into the narratives that frame each of our lives, participants in this project have broadened their experience of reality and worked through the difficult emotional states that arise with a growing awareness of the crisis occurring in the natural world. This kind of transformation of the ontological and epistemological foundation which frames a person’s lifeworld has the potential to engender a greater sense of belonging, especially if it is undertaken in a larger community of inquiry. By attending to processes of meaning-making in the way we address social and environmental problems, we may open up new avenues for thinking and acting, which help young people to become whole, healthy and resilient human beings in a time of global crises.

This chapter analyzes the concept of distress and its application into climate matters. Distress emerges as a broad concept with many connotations. There are so many similarities between climate distress and climate anxiety as broad concepts that they may be used almost interchangeably, but when these phenomena are more carefully scrutinized, a wide vocabulary of various mental states and emotions is required. The history of the usage of climate distress is provided. The role of power dynamics in the usages is explored. Contextual factors are discussed, especially in relation to various cultures and languages. Related dynamics are explored via the example of discourses about climate distress in Finland and Sweden. It is argued that care is needed in analyzing the usage of concepts by various authors. The dual character of climate distress as both a potential mental health issue and fundamentally an adaptive reaction is highlighted.