Depression, anxiety, and anger are only a few of the devastating mental health effects of climate change. Eco-anxiety is a newly coined term used to capture the feelings of stress and worry many people carry as a result of the environmental crisis. Researchers have found six components that uniquely characterize eco-anxiety: worries about the future and next generations, empathy, conflict, psychological symptoms, loneliness, frustration, and feeling disturbed by uncontrolled and sudden climate changes (Mento et al., 2023).
Not surprisingly, populations that are directly exposed to the impacts of climate change, due to their geographic location, are more likely to experience eco-anxiety (Cianconi et al., 2020). In fact, one study found that experiencing several climate-related exposures, including heat, humidity, rainfall, drought, wildfires, and floods, was correlated with psychological distress and worsened mental health, including an increase in psychiatric hospitalizations and suicide rates (Charlson et al., 2021). Indigenous persons, children, and older adults have also been found to be particularly vulnerable to the mental health impacts of climate change (White et al., 2023).
Bestselling Australian author Charlotte McConaghy dives deep into the psychological effects of climate change in her latest novel, Wild Dark Shore. She recently shared with me her perspective on managing eco-anxiety, parenting through an environmental crisis, and finding hope.
Q: Your book, Wild Dark Shore, takes place on a remote island where the impacts of climate change are hitting hard. As the characters in the story work against the clock to make a difference in a dystopian world, eco-anxiety is at the forefront of each character’s mind. According to research, sudden climate changes are generating different emotions in humans, including depression, anxiety, and anger (Mento et al., 2023). How does eco-anxiety show up in the characters in your novel? Have you personally experienced eco-anxiety in your own life? What strategies have you found most effective in mitigating it?
CM: The characters of Wild Dark Shore are facing an impending environmental disaster—specifically, their home is being swallowed by rising sea levels. They can see the beach changing shape, crumbling away into the sea. They can see the behaviour of animals changing. And they experience dangerous weather events frequently. They are each acutely aware of this, and it impacts their mental health quite strongly. Dom, the father, is filled with anxiety for his children—their safety he carries as a heavy weight, given the danger of their daily lives. This anxiety, as well as the unresolved trauma he experienced upon the death of his wife, manifests as him speaking to his late wife as a way to cope with his fears.
Raff, the eldest child, has an immense amount of rage that he doesn’t have adequate coping systems for, and the daughter, Fen, copes with her fear by retreating to a lonely wind-swept beach where she can dwell among the seals. Rowan, the novel’s protagonist, is dealing with grief after the enormous loss of her home in a bushfire, and she has hardened herself against connection out of a fear of any further loss caused by the unpredictable environment, while Orly, the novel’s youngest character, desperately clings to his passion for plants and seeds, because he can see the threat they face as the climate catastrophe worsens.
As someone who writes novels that explore the natural world and our connection to it, I of course feel eco-anxiety, because it’s something I have to write about and face every time I sit down at my computer. I have immense worry for my children and the world they are going to inherit. I feel a low, persistent, dull dread whenever it comes to mind. I cope with this by reminding myself of all the small things I do to make a positive change, and of how I have dedicated myself to making a positive impact on the world, whether it’s through my writing, or the small daily decisions I make to lower my environmental footprint. I also think about all the people in the world who are doing the same, who have committed to the fight, and to not giving up hope.
Q: Research shows that several climate-related exposures, including heat, humidity, rainfall, drought, wildfires, and floods are associated with psychological distress, worsened mental health, and higher mortality among people with pre-existing mental health conditions, increased psychiatric hospitalizations, and heightened suicide rates (White et al., 2023). In your book, Rowan loses everything in a rampant wildfire, like many families have recently experienced in Los Angeles. Other characters in the novel experience psychosis as a result of the desperation of their bleak climate-related circumstances. What are your thoughts on the impacts of climate change on mental health? What drew you to explore this topic in Wild Dark Shore?
CM: Well, this is no longer a hypothetical future; we can see the impacts on people happening right now. Of course being exposed to terrifying things like fires, floods, and droughts causes psychological distress: They are directly threatening people’s lives, their livelihoods, and their quality of life. I write about this because it’s everywhere, it’s something we are all having to face now, and we have to make profound decisions about how we wish to live our lives. Either we can try to ignore what’s happening before our very eyes, or we can face it head on, and I think that having art and literature exist in the world—art that is inspiring for people—helps them to cope with the fear. I try to write about climate change because I want my readers to know they’re not alone in fearing the future. I want them to know we are in this together, can survive it together, can make a change for the better together.
Q: How did you change, personally, in the process of writing Wild Dark Shore? Where do you see yourself in the story?
CM: I don’t think I have changed, but I have been able to wrestle with my fears a little more bravely through the writing of this novel. They say that to name something takes its power away, and I experienced a little of that by naming my fears around climate change but also about loss in general—loss of home, of landscapes we love, loss of wildlife and biodiversity, loss of people we cherish. There is a little of me in each of the five main characters, pieces of things I feel or think or love or fear. I felt immense catharsis writing this book, and now I feel free to explore something different.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from spending time with this book?
CM: I hope it brings them comfort in the dark, a reminder that there is always love even in the darkest moments, that the only meaning is love. I hope it encourages them to think deeply about the treasures of the natural world that we haven’t yet lost, and about their own impact on the world, and how they can make it a positive one. I hope it moves them, and that they love spending time with these five characters, with the strange and unearthly Shearwater Island.
