As some predict global destruction due to climate change, therapists have started offering “climate-aware” counseling to help those suffering from “the mental health impacts of climate change.”
The Climate Psychology Alliance of North America has compiled a directory of therapists across the country who will provide such services.
Their “shared goal” is to “use our unique psychotherapeutic skills to meet the multiple, mounting mental health crises arising out of the increasing instability of our planetary system.”
According to the directory, these therapists acknowledge “the complicated nature of the human response to [the] climate crisis, without presuming the presence or absence of climate-related distress.”
Furthermore, they claim to understand “our relationships to nature and living systems, and our interaction with climate science and climate media can be useful tools for integrating and resolving psychological conflicts and stressors.”
Professionals on the list include Plano-based therapist Heather Cohen, who advertises helping people with “21st century distress.”
Seeking to alleviate “distress related to complex society issues,” Cohen markets herself as an expert in providing therapy for “political polarization,” “injustice (racial, economic, etc.),” “ecological change & climate emergency,” and “spiritual/existential questioning related to current conditions.”
Not everyone agrees in the alleged climate crisis, however.
“Climate anxiety is a self-inflicted malady,” the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) said in an email received by The Dallas Express.
“A recent study sought to test how environmental knowledge and climate specific knowledge are associated with climate change anxiety,” TPPF’s Aliyah Formont and Carson Clayton added. “The statistical analysis of over 2,000 individuals shows that there is in fact a correlation.”
“Results that people who possess more overall environmental knowledge experience less climate change anxiety; the same results applied to climate specific knowledge,” they proffered, suggesting that those who seemingly understood environmental factors were less worried than those who apparently did not.
“Coincidently, we seem to know less about the climate the more it dominates headlines,” they continued. “The reality is that the climate has never been static. The hyperbole used by the climate-obsessed media is creating an unnecessary and uncivil atmosphere of panic and fear.”
Famously, many well-publicized “climate change” predictions of famine, flood, fire, or ice from scientists, government organizations, and activist groups have not come to pass.
Nevertheless, more dire predictions by climate scientists and advocacy groups allege that global destruction is precariously close, asserting that drastic government action is needed to prevent apocalyptic conditions.
The Biden administration has urged regulatory measures in response to climate anxiety, though they have proved nationally unpopular, as reported by The Dallas Express.