Feeling anxious about climate change? Here are some ways to cope

It's hard to hear about the latest news in the climate crisis and not feel some anxiety.

Allegra Netten, a doctoral student at the University of Prince Edward Island, has found it's not only she and her friends who are feeling that way.

The third-year student in clinical psychology is doing research to develop a scale to measure anxiety about climate change. In January, she put out a survey and initially received more than 600 responses from across Canada.

"We certainly did see high levels of people having knowledge about climate change, worry about climate change," she said.

The scale is a 35-item questionnaire, and participants can rate each item on a scale from one (strongly disagree) to five (strongly agree).

While doing research to develop the scale, Netten has also looked at ways to deal with stress around the climate crisis.

"One of the big things that people can do to help manage anxiety is to think about what kinds of actions they can take to mitigate climate change or adapt to climate change," she said.

These actions can include eating less meat or animal products, flying less, or engaging in some kind of activism or advocacy, Netten said.

"Those kinds of activities — if not totally eliminating the anxiety — can help someone to feel less hopeless or less powerless, and feel as though they're able to take more action to make change in the area that's concerning them," she said.

Connecting to the natural world can also be useful in easing climate anxiety, Netten said.

"Doing things that help you feel more connected to nature — whether it's going hiking or growing your own foods, getting more involved in the environment — seems to be something that is helpful for people."

Netten noted, though, that feeling stressed when thinking about the climate crisis is a reasonable response.

"It's really important for us to note that some level of anxiety in response to knowing about climate change is completely normal and, in fact, expected, and might motivate people to engage in more pro-environmental action," she said.

"But there can be times when the anxiety becomes concerning where it's really distressing, or it's getting in the way of important areas of life or functioning."