Study shows nearly one million Canadians have serious climate concerns

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has told how at the age of 11, she was very sad She stopped talking and eating about climate change and lost 10 kilograms in two months.

Here in Canada, a mother of two in Salmon Arm, BC, says she is concerned about the climate her children will experience.becomes so heavy that it suffocatesA Calgary student says she started obsessing over food to cope with her anxiety about the state of our planet, and sometimes it was just too much.too overwhelmed with food options Were the best for the planet, I barely ate anything.”

But how common is this kind of concern in Canada? A new study estimates that climate anxiety is so severe that it disrupts the sleep and everyday functioning of nearly one million Canadians.

The study, published Tuesday in Nature Mental HealthMore than 2,400 Canadians aged 13 or older were randomly surveyed and graded using a climate change concern scale developed in the US. It asks to what extent people agree with statements such as “Thinking about climate change makes it difficult for me to sleep” or “I find myself crying because of climate change.”

It found that 90 percent of respondents were concerned about climate change and 68 percent felt some degree of concern – which researchers thought was a normal, healthy response given the impacts of climate change such as wildfires and extreme heat.

But 2.35 percent had “medically relevant” symptoms.

clinical significance

Sherrill Harper, a public health professor at the University of Alberta who led the study, says more than 980,000 people in Canada, nearly a million people, experience climate change anxiety that is affecting their sleep, ability to concentrate “or affecting their daily lives in some kind of negative way that is reaching clinical significance.”

The rate of “clinically relevant” climate anxiety is slightly lower than the 2.5 to three per cent of Canadians with generalized anxiety disorder, although researchers don’t know how much overlap there is between the two groups.

He and his colleagues found that people across Canada were experiencing climate anxiety, even some who had not themselves experienced impacts such as wildfires or extreme heat.

“The important thing is that there is support for those people,” he said.

That support could be individual therapists trained to talk about climate concerns, or community events like climate cafes where people can connect and share their concerns. While there is evidence taking action on climate change While coping with anxiety can help, Harper says people also need places where they can talk about it without the expectation that they’re going to take drastic action.

The study found that rates of climate concern decreased with age – it was highest among Generations Y and Z, and lowest among baby boomers and older generations.

It was highest among Indigenous people, but other groups also had higher rates: women, those with household incomes less than $60,000, and people living in northern Canada.

That’s no surprise to Merrill Dean, a school psychologist who works in Northwest Territories communities.

She says it makes sense that northerners are more concerned about climate change “because we’re seeing more of it here.”

The North has warmed four times faster than other parts of the world. Dean said when she first moved there 40 years ago, lightning storms were rare and the trees were smaller. Since then, warming has led to larger trees and more lightning, leading to wildfires.

existential dread

dean has wrote about the impact Wildfires forced the evacuation of 70 percent of the region’s population in 2023.

Upon returning, Dean says his concerns came from the vast changes in his environment, from burned-out houses to large areas of charred trees – and even large-scale fires to reduce the risks of future wildfires.

There are changes outside of wildfire season, Dean says. The creeks no longer freeze over in the winter, leaving many indigenous communities unable to perform traditional activities such as seal hunting.

Of the children she works with, Dean says, “I’m seeing a lot of students suffer from this existential dread that I’ve never seen before. It’s almost, ‘What’s the point?'”

Catherine Malboeuf, a psychology professor at Bishop’s University, has also seen it in southern Quebec, where she lives.

“Studies show that regardless of your age, we are reacting more to climate change, and having greater psychological side effects.”

Malboeuf was not involved in the new study, but he has studied climate-related anxiety in children and is looking at whether there is a connection between it in parents and their children.

She says there is a shift taking place among clinical psychologists in developing ways to manage climate anxiety.

“The first step would be to remove the taboos around it, to be able to discuss it openly,” he said.

Both she and Dean say the new study raises needed awareness.