The Environment, Climate Change, and Mental Health

A few months ago this article in the magazine WIRED attracted some attention. It deals with the topic of "solastalgia", a word coined by the Australian environmental philosopher to describe the distress experienced by those whose environment is changing around them.

Albrecht had worked for many years as an environmental activist and advocate in the Hunter Region of New South Wales. Open cut coal mining and the construction of new power stations had transformed this formerly agricultural landscape. Local residents who were concerned about specific environmental issues contacted Albrecht to discuss these. In the course of these interactions he began to notice that a wider distress at the extent of local environmental change was evident. Influenced by various environmental thinkers, who argued man-made environmental stress lead to “land-sickness” (which, unlike other "natural" environmental stresses, did not lead to an environmental recovery) and caused psychic stress among the population of the particular environment, he developed the concept of solastalgia.

Albrecht described how "nostalgia" was traditionally defined as sadness at absence from a particular place, and wrote in his original paper on solastaliga “People who are still in their home environs can also experience place-based distress in the face of the lived experience of profound environmental change. The people of concern are still ‘at home’, but experience a ‘homesickness’ similar to that caused by nostalgia. What these people lack is solace or comfort derived from their present relationship to ‘home’, and so, a new form of psychoterratic illness needs to be defined. The word ‘solace’ relates to both psychological and physical contexts.”

Clive Thompson, who wrote the WIRED article, described "solastalgia" as "a fascinating new concept in mental health." Do you think that "solastalgia" can be described as a "mental illness?"