Now We’re Talking to Therapists About Climate Anxiety

Psychologists weren’t exactly trained to counsel clients through the destruction of the planet

Photo: fizkes/Getty Images

For the better part of a year, a young man in Melbourne had been struggling with insomnia, depression, and anxiety. He heard strange voices, stopped going to school, and contemplated suicide. As his condition worsened, he spent more time online, reading about climate change. Before long, he had convinced himself that he was personally responsible for the depletion of the earth’s water supplies. He compulsively checked the faucets at home, fearing that a leaky tap could deprive “millions of people.” By the time he was admitted to the inpatient unit at Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, he was trying not to drink water at all. “I feel guilty about it,” he explained to his psychiatrists. (After several days on antipsychotics, he conceded that the oceans would survive his eight cups a day.) His case, described in a 2008 report in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, was the first reported instance of “climate change delusion.”

It probably won’t be the last. The news about climate change has been bleak for a long time, and over the past few years, it’s become harder to ignore. In 2018, the United Nations released a panic-inducing report predicting massive…