The Anxiety and Grief of the Ecological Crisis

Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health (ACAMH)

DOI: 10.13056/acamh.17994
As the world focuses on the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), we caught up with Dr. Laelia Benoit, a French and Brazilian Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, invited as a Fulbright Research Scholar at the Yale School of Medicine.
Laelia’s research focuses on ecoanxiety among children and adolescents, and she is a co-author of the recent paper ‘Ecological awareness, anxiety, and actions among youth and their parents – a qualitative study of newspaper narratives’, published in the Special Issue of CAMH. doi.org/10.1111/camh.12514 You can access this paper free until 3 December 2021
Laelia sets the scene by defining ‘ecoanxiety’ and ‘ecological grief’ in children and adolescents, and provides insights into how these can manifest in children and young people.
Laelia then provides a summary of her recently co-authored CAMH paper, explaining the methodology used for the research and outlining the key findings and conclusions.
Furthermore, Laelia also talks us through the various ways in which children are depicted in the press according to their perspectives on climate change and how parents can best support their children who are experiencing ecological grief and anxiety.
Laelia also discusses the role of existential psychology as a useful framework to approach the climate crisis, and what the implications of her findings are for professionals working with young people, public health officials, and policymakers.