Eco-anxiety and Hope

(June 2019) Numerous Finns have realized that they are not alone in their anxiety about the global environmental crisis. In the last 18 months, a small nation of five million people has started a national discussion about eco-anxiety. Peer support groups are being formed, educators are starting to be trained to encounter these feelings, and a project aims to develop skills in the social and health sector to alleviate difficult forms of eco-anxiety. Alongside these events, social conflicts have also intensified, writes Dr. Panu Pihkala, a researcher in multidisciplinary environmental studies and author whose work focuses on these developments. The word ‘ ympäristöahdistus ’ is a mouthful –even for a native Finnish speaker; but back in 2017, you hardly ever heard the word for ‘eco-anxiety’ in Finland. A few pioneers had addressed the psychological impacts of climate change since 2007, but this remained mostly unrecognized. The devious mechanism of “socially constructed silence” ab