Identifying and Treating “Climate Anxiety”—Vermont State Agency Offers Help to the Helping Professions

A quick internet search for “climate anxiety,” which is also often referred to as “eco-anxiety,” “eco-grief,” or “climate doom,” produces numerous links to the psychological and psychiatric literature on the topic. The Program on Climate Change Communication within the Yale School of the Environment appears to be a major contributor to this research. Mental health professionals and mass trauma researchers report seeing more patients with symptoms of this anxiety, but they’re not always sure how to treat it.

Climate Anxiety Isn’t a Medical Diagnosis

Reputable medical establishments such as the Cleveland Clinic clarify that, although this psychological condition isn’t a medical diagnosis, it is a commonly-accepted popular term used to describe a collection of symptoms triggered by long-term shifts in temperature and weather patterns, and can be exacerbated by other existing anxiety disorders. Experts find that the age 16-34 demographic—those known as Generation Z and Millennials—is particularly vulnerable to climate anxiety.

Some even believe that the condition may increase the risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a mental health condition that is caused by either being part of an extremely traumatic event, or witnessing it. Some also believe that indigenous people are some of the most vulnerable populations to experience negative impacts as a result of direct exposure to climate change. The list of climate-anxiety symptoms is extensive:

A sense of being overwhelmed and helpless in the face of changing climate and weather patterns;
Worrying about the future;
Exposure to headlines about natural disaster or reading about climate change news;
Losing sleep over climate change, a sense of impending doom, feelings of anger at oneself and/or others;
Experiencing a sense of guilt or shame;
Avoidance of conversations or activities as a way of avoiding environmental triggers; and,
Lack of confidence in making major life decisions.

An example of this last symptom might be, for example, decisions about having children because of the belief that they would damage the planet (or because the planet could damage children). This is increasingly a fear that many young adults—the demographic most vulnerable to climate anxiety—have expressed and that could have serious repercussions for the entire world.

Experts Say Worrying about Climate is Healthy

Investigators at the Yale climate change program have found that 64 percent of Americans said they were “at least somewhat worried” about global warming. These mental health experts believe that this 64 percent finding in itself is healthy because worrying somewhat about something motivates a person to figure out what he can do about it. Thus, they advocate that more people should be worried about climate change.

But they also caution that worry can be a problem if it becomes overwhelming and debilitating, keeping a person from living one’s life, at which point it becomes a serious diagnosis. Climate anxiety, moreover, is highly correlated with generalized anxiety, so it tends to affect people who are already anxious about other aspects of their lives.

Further findings include that among Americans:

9 percent report feeling down, depressed, or hopeless for at least several days out of the last two weeks
12 percent say they struggle to stop themselves from consuming bad news about global warming
8 percent say they are, or would be interested in, seeking counseling to discuss feelings about global warming
Very few are fatalistic that it’s already too late to do anything about global warming; most believe that the country can still solve the problem.

Help for the Helping Professions in Vermont

For those witnessing painful stress and tension caused by the climate crisis, the Vermont Collaborative for Practice Improvement and Innovation (VCPI) offers a 12-week course for individuals in the helping professions to build their own climate resilience and grow “ecological emotional intelligence.” The course, entitled “From Climate Anxiety to Climate Resilience,” is normally offered at $1,200 tuition, but discounted to $899. It is designed to assist coaches, educators, health or mental health providers, social workers, healers, and other helping professionals to maintain their own composure when sharing the same overwhelming feelings as those they are trying to help.

Topics covered in the course include creating safe spaces, one-on-one or small groups to foster genuine conversation for patients who are alarmed or obsessing about abnormal weather patterns, devastating floods, tsunamis, erupting volcanoes, and melting glaciers. Thus, everyone can rest assured that the helping professions are studying the rising tide (no pun intended) of climate anxiety and ways to ameliorate it. And standing behind their helping efforts are Ivy League universities and state government agencies with their expertise.

Nagging Thoughts and Questions About “Climate Anxiety,” Identification, and Treatment

While some may question that a small New England state is sponsoring a class to assist the “helping professions” build their own climate resilience and grow “ecological emotional intelligence,” it is also sobering to consider that such instruction is necessary at all. What kind of society must offer instruction for these professionals so they do not lose their composure when treating others who exhibit symptoms of this psychological condition?

Is this newfound variant of anxiety so prevalent among the populace that the helping professionals themselves need extra assistance to buttress themselves as they help others who are assisting the general population? In any case, identification and treatment of climate anxiety could be considered a means to keep the helping professions employed.

And if climate anxiety is so prevalent, what might be the basis of this affliction? On this etiological level, one might question whether this newfound psychological condition may in fact be another example of using fear as a means to control the populace and manipulate people to behave in particular ways.

Some commentators contend that the recent pandemic lockdowns, mandates, and social restrictions, implemented by public health experts to avert virus contagion, represented a “dress rehearsal” for something similar with respect to climate change. Thus, climate anxiety may portend climate experts’ imposition of similar measures on the populace as a means to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Lastly, a case can be made that every individual must have choices in deciding what may cause our anxiety, unburdened by what others may want to tell us what we should fear. If I currently fear that I’m getting old, aging more rapidly than I think I should, this fear must surely in some way be caused by climate change. After all, the United Nations and other entities constantly remind us that climate change is an existential threat. Why do I, an aging American whose very existence is ultimately on the line, not exhibit the symptoms of climate anxiety?

Originally Posted at https://mises.org/

zerohedge
Economics , News , Politics , Science
December 7, 2024
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The Miserable Cost Of An Open Border

Authored by Seth Barron via RealClearPolitics,

The Biden-Harris experiment in dissolving the U.S. border has wrought massive changes to American society, most of which will not be understood for years, if not decades. Since 2021, U.S. border officials have had at least 10 million “encounters” with migrants, many of whom were allowed to enter the country. There is no telling how many more aliens entered the country without encountering enforcement agents. The population of the United States may have increased by as much as 15 million people in just a few years.

This massive flow of humanity crosses multiple national borders, involves every mode of transportation, accounts for billions of dollars paid in fees to smugglers, and describes a fantastically complex economy of suffering and hope. In an effort to get a handle on this human tide, noted muckraker James O’Keefe – known for his hidden camera “gotcha” interviews with abortionists, media executives, progressive nonprofit executives, and other degenerate types – traces the migrant onrush from its source, and seeks to trace the machinery of profit and influence that is conducting it from great removes.

“Line In The Sand,” the resulting documentary, is a remarkable and humane exposition, revealing perspectives and images American audiences have mostly been prevented from seeing. O’Keefe and his intrepid team begin on the U.S. side of the Mexican border, where we witness migrants crossing the border through holes that their guides have cut in a fence that serves as a target as much as a barrier. Infrared cameras show dozens of illegal aliens streaming toward “pick-up” vehicles on the U.S. side while smugglers – presumably cartel members – a few feet away taunt O’Keefe and his group. “What if I were to run up to them right now, what would happen?” O’Keefe asks his guide. “I would highly advise you against that,” he is told, in a classic understatement.

The fact that coyotes and other human traffickers are paid to assist northbound migrants with their passage is no scandal; we all know what their motivations are and why they are doing what they do. But O’Keefe documents multiple examples of U.S. Border Patrol agents standing idly by while illegal aliens cross, virtually under their noses. “Why aren’t you doing anything?” he asks. “Have a good day, guys,” a border agent desultorily responds before driving off in the general direction of the episode. Later, a migrant stands in front of a Border Patrol truck, clearly trying to alert the agents of his intention to surrender, but is studiously ignored until O’Keefe and his team call their attention to him.

There is a kind of sad comedy in the operations of U.S. border security, and O’Keefe is not unsympathetic to the absurd position that border agents have been put in. Trained to defend the national border and to serve as the first line of defense of American soil, these agents have been recommissioned as a perverse Welcome Wagon for illegal aliens, charged with making their undocumented and uninvited entrance to the United States as commodious as possible.

Looking to get deeper into the heart of this migratory avalanche, O’Keefe went deep into Mexico, to the city of Irapuato, about 150 miles northwest of Mexico City. Irapuato is a popular railway junction where thousands of migrants climb aboard “La Bestia,” or “The Beast,” a cargo train that chugs northward toward the United States. In the film’s most remarkable footage, O’Keefe and his team join with migrants, mostly from South and Central America, to ride The Beast, also known as “el Tren del Muerto,” or the Train of Death. O’Keefe talks to the migrants without condescension, asking them their destinations and what they plan to do when they get there, and their concerns about the perilous nature of the journey. We see the film crew race to jump on a moving train and clamber on top to sit in a pile of coal; O’Keefe is shocked at how truly dangerous this small element of the trip is and sympathizes with the migrants’ difficult choices. These scenes are among the film’s most affecting, along with the crew’s random encounter with a little girl who had just crossed the border after journeying from Guatemala by herself. There is a human dimension to illegal immigration, and O’Keefe does not ignore it.

However, there is also an impersonal dimension to this massive population transfer, and O’Keefe determinedly aims to uncover it – to put a face to the institutions and administrators that benefit from the rough injection of millions of people into American society. From government agents to bus companies to nonprofit resettlement groups to private contractors running huge, walled compounds housing thousands of children, O’Keefe doggedly tries to penetrate the mechanics of a system that resolutely hides itself behind a screen of silence, usually in the name of “safety” and “privacy.”

Some of the film’s more comical moments pertain to these segments, such as when the team follows some just-arrived Chinese migrants in San Diego to an employment agency, where other Chinese aliens, already in the country for several months, complain that it’s much harder to live in the United States than they had imagined. O’Keefe tries to sniff out a connection between the owner of the agency and more powerful actors, but it emerges that there really isn’t much going on; in fact, the owner asks O’Keefe if he knows of a way to apply for government grants.

Elsewhere, O’Keefe tries to get information about the operations of several huge residential centers for unaccompanied minors and tries to spin their refusal to give him access to the centers or submit to interviews as evidence of the existence of vast, government-funded child sex trafficking networks. But it seems more likely, though no less troubling, that the open borders policy of the last four years has created a tremendous humanitarian crisis of alien children roaming the continent by themselves, and the government is probably trying to keep them from becoming prey to sex traffickers while they sort out where to send them. Though O’Keefe does not uncover a salacious network of child predators, his vigorous pursuit of the truth does reveal the existence of a large, shadowy, government-funded, and lucrative system of child “welfare.”

So, “Line In The Sand” is correct in the larger sense that billions of dollars are being spent managing this human flow, and many people are getting rich off of it. The last thing these parasitical administrators of the nonprofit industrial complex want is for the border to close. O’Keefe does a great job of capturing in real time the corruption of a local New York City nonprofit called La Jornada, whose leader, Pedro Rodriguez, evidently perpetrates fraud, demanding fees for services that the city provides for free. O’Keefe also sends a Spanish-speaking reporter undercover into the Roosevelt Hotel, New York City’s main processing center for newly-arrived migrants, which offers him free housing, medical care, and even airplane tickets, even though the reporter explains that he has no identification of any sort. How, O’Keefe asks, in our post 9/11 security-obsessed era, are we to make sense of a system that admits millions of unvetted foreigners into the country, and then offers to fly them anywhere they care to go?

“Line In The Sand” is rough in parts, but intentionally so. Its subject is so sprawling and tangled that a neat and clean representation would be a lie. Even with a nine-figure budget – which this film assuredly did not have – a documentary about the border and the 30 million-footed human swarm that has crossed it would be messy and incomplete. But James O’Keefe and his small team have done something remarkable. They have taken on the decade’s biggest story, given it form, and preserved the humanity of its subjects. It is worth watching.

Seth Barron is a writer in New York and author of the forthcoming “Weaponized from Humanix.”

Tyler Durden
Sat, 12/07/2024 – 17:30