How Climate Change Is Impacting Our Mental Health

Summary

Podcast Summary: "How Climate Change Is Impacting Our Mental Health"

The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Host: David Remnick
Guest: Dr. Lisa Van Susteren, co-founder of the Climate Psychiatry Alliance
Date: May 22, 2023

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Overview

This episode explores the significant and growing impact of climate change on mental health, particularly among young people. David Remnick speaks with Dr. Lisa Van Susteren, a psychiatrist who specializes in the psychological effects of climate disruption, about how climate anxiety manifests, how it differs from past existential threats, and how the mental health community is responding. The discussion also covers important lawsuits—Juliana v. United States and Held v. Montana—where youth are seeking legal accountability for government climate inaction, and the unique emotional burdens shouldered by younger generations.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Real Voices: Everyday Climate Anxiety

Timestamps: 01:28–03:05

• Perspectives from Different Ages:
  • Young people voice fears over looming climate calamities, food security, and whether to have children at all.
  • A grandparent worries about the prospects for future generations.
  • Firsthand account: a young person recalls the traumatic impact of Hurricane Sandy and how seeing devastation as a child shapes lifelong fear.
• Quote: “I try not to be alarmist, but I feel like there’s some sort of apocalypse that’s awaiting around climate change... calamity can come at any time.” (Young Person 1, 01:28)
• Quote: “I think we're getting towards a point where we're not going to be able to reverse the damages... is this a world I want to bring [kids] into?” (Young Person 2, 01:55)

2. Mental Health Crisis: Beyond the Pandemic

Timestamps: 03:05–05:20

• Climate Change as a Mental Health Stressor:
  • Remnick notes that America faces a mental health crisis from many sources: the pandemic, social media, but increasingly, climate change.
  • Dr. Van Susteren asserts that young people, already destabilized by COVID-19, are uniquely vulnerable to climate distress.
• Quote: “Kids will disproportionately feel the cumulative effect of climate instability.” (Dr. Van Susteren, 04:24)

3. Measuring Climate Anxiety

Timestamps: 05:20–06:44

• Challenges in Quantification:
  • Anxiety is difficult to neatly separate into categories, but large-scale surveys give indicators.
  • In a study across 10 countries, three-quarters of kids are worried about the future due to climate, half report daily impacts, and over half feel doom—two-thirds blame government.
• Quote: “Three quarters of the kids are worried about the future because of climate. Almost half... say it affects their daily lives. More than half say they feel a sense of doom about the future.” (Dr. Van Susteren, 05:37)
• Quote: “Two-thirds of those kids lay the blame firmly at the feet of government.” (Dr. Van Susteren, 06:18)

4. Climate Anxiety Versus Past Existential Fears

Timestamps: 06:44–07:58

• Comparing Nuclear Anxieties to Climate Threats:
  • Remnick recounts Cold War-era nuclear drills.
  • Van Susteren argues climate change is more concrete and visual—fires, floods, storms are tangibly experienced by children, making distress harder to avoid than abstract nuclear threats.
• Quote: “If you're a kid today, you can see a fire, a flood, a storm... This is very something that is extremely visual.” (Dr. Van Susteren, 07:27)

5. Pathologizing or Normalizing Climate Distress

Timestamps: 08:01–10:31

• Direct Clinical Insights:
  • While Dr. Van Susteren speaks with many young people (not all clinical patients), the emotions reported include anger, despair, betrayal, and most poignantly, helplessness.
  • Introduces concept of "pre-traumatic stress": an anticipatory anxiety about future disasters—akin to PTSD, but forward-looking.
  • Stresses the need not to label this distress as mental illness: it’s a logical, even adaptive, response to real danger.
  • But when anxiety becomes disabling, the line blurs towards needing clinical intervention.
• Quote: “We must not pathologize climate distress... It’s a logical response to an imminent threat... it’s a survival strategy.” (Dr. Van Susteren, 09:03–09:21)
• Quote: “I believe we’re all anxious now, whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not, whether we admit it or not.” (Dr. Van Susteren, 09:41)

6. Climate Distress Across Ages

Timestamps: 10:31–11:30

• Difference in Generational Response:
  • Older adults may feel more empowered due to broader agency, while young people experience more helplessness—amplifying their distress.
• Quote: “That helplessness is the worst.” (Dr. Van Susteren, 11:22)

7. Approaches to Coping and Empowerment

Timestamps: 11:30–13:02

• Supporting Young People:
  • Dr. Van Susteren gives age-appropriate strategies for managing climate fears—ranging from reassuring statements for younger children to supporting activism in teens.
  • Emphasizes “secret sauce” to reducing anxiety is empowerment—practical action, solidarity, and age-appropriate engagement.
• Quote: “Empowerment is the secret sauce in reducing anxiety and that feeling of helplessness.” (Dr. Van Susteren, 12:37)

8. The Legal Front: Youth Suits Against Government

Timestamps: 13:02–15:55

• Held v. Montana and Juliana v. United States:
  • Dr. Van Susteren is an expert witness in two landmark cases where youth plaintiffs argue that governmental inaction violates rights to a healthy environment.
  • Montana’s constitution explicitly promises this; the lawsuits catalog both physical and psychological harms to young people.
• Quote: “We are guaranteed a right to life, liberty and property. And those three protections are profoundly being challenged by climate disruption.” (Dr. Van Susteren, 13:54)

9. Recognizing Climate Anxiety in Mental Health Systems

Timestamps: 15:55–16:46

• Towards Medical Recognition:
  • Dr. Van Susteren advocates for legitimatizing climate distress as a medical issue—not necessarily a mental illness, but as a recognized condition, which would enable insurance coverage and structured support.
• Quote: “We can create a way not to suggest that a person is mentally ill, but rather struggling with a very real issue... that can exacerbate pre-existing conditions.” (Dr. Van Susteren, 16:20)

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Memorable Quotes

• “Kids will disproportionately feel the cumulative effect of climate instability.” (Dr. Lisa Van Susteren, 04:53)
• “Not to think of [climate anxiety] as a mental illness... it’s a survival strategy.” (Dr. Lisa Van Susteren, 09:03–09:21)
• “Empowerment is the secret sauce in reducing anxiety and that feeling of helplessness.” (Dr. Lisa Van Susteren, 12:37)

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Notable Moments and Timestamps

• 01:28–03:05: Real voices sharing their personal climate fears
• 05:37: Results from international youth climate anxiety survey
• 09:03: Discussion on pathologizing versus normalizing climate distress
• 12:37: Guidance on empowering young people as a way to alleviate climate anxiety
• 13:35: Legal context and constitutional arguments in youth climate lawsuits
• 16:20: Argument for insurance and professional recognition of climate anxiety

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Conclusion

This episode provides a nuanced look at the intersection of climate change and mental health—highlighting how feelings of doom and helplessness are spreading among the young, and how therapists are working to respond. It distinguishes between disabling clinical distress and logical, collective anxiety, urging action and empowerment as remedies. The discussion also signals a key shift: recognizing climate anxiety not as a pathology, but as a predictable—and reasonable—response to the existential threats facing the younger generation. Dr. Van Susteren’s clinical insights and involvement in landmark climate litigation underscore both the scale of the problem and the urgent need for systemic solutions.

Transcript

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[David Remnant]

This is the political scene and I'm David Remnant.

[Young Person 1]

I try not to be alarmist, but I feel like there's some sort of apocalypse that's awaiting around climate change. I fear for people who are living below sea level. I fear for people who are very dependent on agriculture. And I can just go to the grocery store so I have a little bit more time. I have a stable income. But I mean, calamity can come at any time.

[Young Person 2]

I think we're getting towards a point where we're not going to be able to reverse the damages to the climate that we make. And I'm, yeah, I'm a little bit worried to see what the consequences of that might be in the future. Especially when I'm thinking about, you know, do I want to have kids? Is that, is this a world I want to bring them into? Is it going to be safe for them? I really don't know.

[Older Person / Grandparent]

I realize that mankind is a tough species to be part of, but we're doing it to the earth and we have to change. I have grandchildren, so I think about what their Lives will be like when mine is no longer here. And it doesn't seem to me that things are happening quickly.

[Young Person 3]

I mean, I lived in Staten island for Hurricane Sandy, and that was like, it devastated that borough in New York. And it was just because of, like, lack of preparedness for. Because of the climate was changing and like, the sea levels were rising and people were like they were drowning in their own homes because of floods and like, I don't know, seeing that as a kid was just really impacts you.

[David Remnant]

In June, a case known as Held v. Montana will go to court. It's a lawsuit about the climate emergency, the first ever of its kind to reach trial. Sixteen young plaintiffs are suing the state of Montana for failing in its obligation under the Montana Constitution to provide them with a healthy environment. And among the harms the plaintiffs will lay out is the emotional distress of watching the world around them get more and more threatened every day. An expert witness the plaintiffs will call in the Held case is the psychiatrist Lisa Van Sustren. She's a co founder of the Climate Psychiatry Alliance, a network of mental health providers concerned with educating colleagues and the public about the climate crisis. I think it's axiomatic now that we have, in ways that are hard to quantify, a mental health crisis in the United States. And a lot of it is ascribed to the pandemic and its aftermath and any number of other factors, social media, and one of them is the climate crisis. How would you at least broadly outline that crisis where it has to do with climate and psychology?

[Dr. Lisa Van Susteren]

Well, let me take it from the top. The pandemic created enormous pressures on kids because they weren't able to socialize and do the things that help them to break away from their par parents and adjust to a new world, et cetera. And so the fact that there was additional challenges to kids is undeniable. But for some reason, when it has come to understanding that kids are hearing, scientists tell us that we are looking at extinction of species and maybe even of our own. And unless they're living in a cave, it's gonna bother them. So, yeah, we have a very serious mental health crisis in kids. And yes, it is disproportionately on them because they will disproportionately feel the cumulative effect of climate instability.

[David Remnant]

Is it possible to quantify the crisis, especially when it comes to climate?

[Dr. Lisa Van Susteren]

The answer, short answer, is no. Anxiety exists in the brain and think of it as a big, dark, black pool. In that big pool, it is impossible to quantify. Today I'm anxious about climate this much. About not looking good? That much. And about not getting into the right school. A different amount. But here's what I can tell you. I participated in a survey that we launched in 2021 and had the results in the fall. And in it, we surveyed 10,000 kids from 10 countries all over the world. And here's what we found. Three quarters of the kids are worried about the future because of climate. Almost half of them say it affects their daily lives. More than half say they feel a sense of doom about the future. And here's what's interesting to somebody like me, because I'm really focusing on policy. Two thirds of those kids lay the blame firmly at the feet of government.

[David Remnant]

I grew up with a nuclear threat. I even was probably the last generation of kids who scurried into a hallway or under desks.

[Dr. Lisa Van Susteren]

Under desk. What was that gonna do for us?

[David Remnant]

Well, the desk was gonna prevent you from nuclear annihilation, apparently. And so obviously this fed into our anxiety, but it was kind of inchoate and rarely spoken of. How is this different?

[Dr. Lisa Van Susteren]

Well, think about it. We at the time thought the Soviets or the Russians was in Communists, in my mind were going to do something really bad. I didn't exactly know. You probably didn't either what nuclear war was. But that is very different from what the kids know today. If you're a kid today, you can see a fire, a flood, a storm. You can hear about homes and places that have been leveled. This is very something that is extremely visual. They can understand at a very grassroots level what this means. Nuclear war and a mushroom cloud. What is that?

[David Remnant]

You see patients, right?

[Dr. Lisa Van Susteren]

Sure, I do, Sue. Yeah.

[David Remnant]

And what do they tell you? What are you hearing directly from kids that you talk to?

[Dr. Lisa Van Susteren]

So I have spoken with young people extensively, but not as patients, and we need to recognize that we must not pathologize climate distress. But kids are talking about their anger, they're talking about their fear, they're talking about their despair, they're talking about feelings of abandonment, they are talking about betrayal. And they don't understand why the adults in the room are not taking more action. So let me just say one thing that is pretty characteristic that I have found and in many of the most sensitive kids is what I've dubbed pre traumatic stress, which is anticipation of future harms and has all the hallmarks but of post traumatic stress. But it's in conjuring what will happen in the future.

[David Remnant]

You said that we shouldn't pathologize climate distress. What do you mean by that?

[Dr. Lisa Van Susteren]

Not to Think of it as a mental illness. If it was to be a mental illness to. If you saw somebody on the tracks and the train was coming, to be alarmed and scream at the person to get off the tracks. Well, that's the.

[David Remnant]

What you're saying is a logical response to an imminent flight.

[Dr. Lisa Van Susteren]

More than logical, it's a survival strategy. I started a group called the Climate Aware Therapists because I got so many calls from people who were non functional. And that's when you can begin to talk about it as an entity that should be recognized within my professional groups as becoming a mental. Maybe illness is too strong a term, but a condition. How prevalent is that climate distress itself? I believe we're all anxious now, whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not, whether we admit it or not. But when it reaches the level of a person who is no longer functional, I can't tell you the numbers, but I certainly have heard them anecdotally.

[David Remnant]

Do you experience it yourself? Climate anxiety?

[Dr. Lisa Van Susteren]

Are you kidding? And I try to keep it. This is the big quandary. How much of it do I show my family? Like they don't know. And I've laughed and said very openly I could open a pharmacy with all of the medications I've had my colleagues prescribe for me to address my climate anxiety.

[David Remnant]

We've been talking about young people. What you're saying is that people who are in middle age or older obviously feel climate anxiety and how does it differ for them?

[Dr. Lisa Van Susteren]

Well, first of all, the kids are more attuned to it because they're not the problem. We're a little bit old dogs, new tricks. Plus we're used to a high carbon lifestyle and we're not so ready to give it up. So we deny, we disavow and all the rest. But as for our anxiety, for those of us I know, I think one critical key issue is that many of us feel more empowered than kids do. There's something that I can do. I can reach out to Legislatures, the new climate chief in Massachusetts. There's a lot I can talk to you. There's a lot I can do. The kids basically, you know, they can gather their voices, but they're not empowered. And that helplessness is the worst.

[David Remnant]

What do you do and what do your colleagues do with young people who are feeling overwhelmed by climate anxiety? How do you help them cope? You can't tell them a political fairy tale.

[Dr. Lisa Van Susteren]

No, of course you can't. And they won't listen to it. So the remedies, there's a standard remedy, and that is depending upon the age of the child. I once had a patient whose kid thought that Charlie, their dog, was gonna die because of extinction of the species. And so if it's a little kid like that, you say, oh, gosh, no, Charlie's safe, et cetera. But a 10 year old is different from a teenage. It might be for a younger child. You'll say, well, let's make a garden so that we can grow our own vegetables that will help the planet. And you can engage in activities that are age appropriate. If it's a teenager, you might say, I stand by your protest today and not going to school and you want me to come with you. So you describe the dangers in a way that meets their particular stage of development. And then you quickly segue to, here's what we can do about it. And that is the secret sauce to feeling empowered. And empowerment is the secret sauce in reducing anxiety and that feeling of helplessness.

[David Remnant]

So you're an expert witness in two climate cases, one that sued the federal government and the other against the state of Montana, which is a case scheduled for June. The plaintiffs are young and some of them are still in their teens. Tell us broadly about what these cases allege and what you were brought in to testify about.

[Dr. Lisa Van Susteren]

The two cases you're speaking of are Juliana versus the US government, 21 youth plaintiffs and the climate scientist James Hansen.

[David Remnant]

And this is James Hansen, who rang the bell about climate change long ago, as much as 40 years ago.

[Dr. Lisa Van Susteren]

That is correct. In 1988, he testified before Congress about climate and greenhouse gases and what they would cause. So the suit is based on constitutional grounds. We are guaranteed a right to life, liberty and property. And those three protections are profoundly being challenged by climate disruption. So that's the Juliana case in held versus the state of Montana. It's essentially the same format. 16 youth plaintiffs suing the state of Montana. Montana State constitution explicitly says that the residents of Montana have a right to a healthful environment. And they don't have that as a result of their policies that are favoring the fossil fuel industry or fossil fuel exploration, extraction, transport, et cetera in the state of Montana.

[David Remnant]

So if I'm understanding this correctly, these are suits. These are actions that are on the level of political action and symbol. What do you hope comes out of them, what's possible, and what is the discovery process like?

[Dr. Lisa Van Susteren]

I wrote reports cataloging the long list 25 page report of all of the harms that are coming to kids as a result of climate inaction. And I also previously worked for the federal government as a psychological profiler of world leaders. And so I profiled the kids. And by that I mean I looked at where they are today and made projections about what I thought could befall them in the future as a result of our climate policies, and particularly what could befall them if we fail to take the action that we need to.

[David Remnant]

Would you want to see insurers cover climate anxiety as a condition or is that pathologizing?

[Dr. Lisa Van Susteren]

No. Great. And I meant to bring this up before. The reason is so important for us to have professionally ways to describe climate distress is that when we can give it a number, as we do in the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual for insiders, then we can get insurance companies to pay for help with the climate distress that you have. And we can create a way not to suggest that a person is mentally ill, but rather struggling with a very real issue and that this very real issue can exacerbate pre existing conditions.

[David Remnant]

Dr. Van Sustern, thank you so much.

[Dr. Lisa Van Susteren]

Thank you, David. Thanks for all you do.

[David Remnant]

Lisa Van Susteren, a co founder of the Climate Psychiatry Alliance. In June, she'll be testifying on behalf of 16 youth plaintiffs in Held v. Montana.

[Dr. Lisa Van Susteren]

America is changing and so is the world.

[David Remnant]

But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.

[Dr. Lisa Van Susteren]

I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.

[David Remnant]

Tristan Redman in London. And this is the Global Story.

[Dr. Lisa Van Susteren]

Every weekday we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.

[David Remnant]

Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Older Person / Grandparent]

From.

[Dr. Lisa Van Susteren]

PRX.