Nurturing wellbeing amidst the climate crisis: on the need for a focus on wellbeing in the field of climate psychology

Abstract

Awareness of climate change can prompt overwhelming emotions that threaten wellbeing such as anger, despair, and anxiety. Neoliberal views of human beings and their mental health strip the individual from their social and material context, driving personal dissatisfaction, social isolation, and ecological destruction. In this piece, we contend that advancements in scholarly research on wellbeing offer valuable insights for addressing the challenges posed by the climate crises while respecting human wellbeing. Such frameworks, which include the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF) and the GENIAL model, emphasize the interconnected nature of people, communities, and their environment. In turn, they help to lay the groundwork for the development of ‘post-growth’ societies focused on supporting outcomes such as human wellbeing, social justice, and environmental regeneration. There are a number of different actions that practitioners and even lay individuals can take to promote positive outcomes and effective responses in the face of the climate crisis. These actions, discussed in the concluding sections of the article, aim to foster wellbeing and impactful engagement with the challenges posed by climate change.

Raising alarm bells for a struggling sector: taking a new approach to improve the wellbeing of climate change professionals

“…In what follows, we outline what we believe to be a first starting point to addressing what is rapidly becoming a mental health crisis that threatens the resilience of a sector that is crucial for the development of effective climate change strategies. In this we adopt a framework that is rooted in climate psychology and offers a multi-faceted approach to wellbeing (Isham et al, 2023 ). By broadening the concept of wellbeing to encompass individual, collective and planetary wellbeing the crisis in the sector can be transformed into an opportunity to revive not only personal motivations but also improve the solutions designed by the sector.…”

“…A sense of community had been identified by Clayton ( 2018 ) as a potential source of resilience for climate professionals; a sentiment which we strongly support. The importance of creating social connections to improve wellbeing for individuals but also communities and the planet is gaining recognition in climate psychology (Wilkie et al, 2022 ; Calabria et al, 2023 ; Isham et al, 2023 ).…”

Book Review: Climate, Psychology, and Change: Reimagining Psychotherapy in an Era of Global Disruption and Climate Anxiety; Bednarek, S., Ed.; North Atlantic Books: Berkeley, CA, USA, 2024; ISBN: 979-8889840817

“…The book "Climate, Psychology and Change" [1] delves into the pressing issue of the climate and ecological emergency (CEE) and reflects on how psychotherapy must change in order to be able to support individuals and communities to manage distress arising from climate breakdown. As a member of the Climate Psychology Alliance (https://www.climatepsychologyalliance.org/, accessed on 20 April 2024) and a Professor of Psychology who has shifted the focus of his research to climate breakdown [2], I was especially interested in reviewing this book to learn of the latest thinking about how psychotherapists are grappling with these issues and to better understand how 'individual wellbeing' might be supported in such a way that avoids the collapse of 'planetary wellbeing'. The overarching aim of the book is to explore and evaluate how therapists might effectively address the devastating psychological impacts of the CEE, which is described as a "wicked problem", a "hyperobject" and an issue so vast in scope, across time and space, that it can be challenging to comprehend.…”