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From Politico
By the time Maria started her prestigious internship at the European Commission’s environment department, her friends already saw her as a climate geek, making her a perfect fit for the role — or so she thought.
It took her only a few months, however, to start feeling utter frustration at the glacial pace at which key decisions to secure the future of the planet were being taken. So, she switched tack, deciding instead to get her hands dirty in the pursuit of saving the planet.
After turning down a permanent job at the most coveted EU institution, she accepted a steep salary cut to work at one of Brussels’ green NGOs. But here too she struggled. While her new colleagues were more attune to the rage she felt seeing the planet burn while people went about their days, the new job brought new stresses.
Her days involved endless reading of scientific reports on climate change, and this worsened her now-lingering mental health condition: eco-anxiety — a term coined and popularized by climate activists to describe the type of mental struggle they experience.
In fact, eco-anxiety is now so widespread that the World Health Organization has published a paper on the need to care for populations most at risk. The condition is also known as solastalgia, environmental distress and ecological grief, and is name-checked as one of many reasons for today’s mental health epidemic.
To cope with her growing distress, Maria, a pseudonym to protect her identify, also signed up to activism. “In activism, you’re surrounded by people who share exactly the same stress, and you feel that you’re acting,” she said.
But soon her relentless fight to protect the planet — by means of reports and advocacy by day, and militant action by night — left her depleted. “I was dedicating my entire life to the cause,” she said, speaking from her new house in France, where she lives and works as a part-time environmentalist.
Maria isn’t alone in feeling anxious because of soaring global temperatures, multiplying climate disasters, sea level rise and entire species being wiped out as their natural ecosystems vanish.
Yet her story shines a light on a particular group of people affected by eco-anxiety — policy wonks spending days crafting and shaping climate legislation. For them, avoiding reading grim news about the planetary fallout simply isn’t an option.
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Wikipedia: Eco-anxiety
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