Research and resources, shaped by those doing the work

Sickness, disillusion, loss and existential dreadIn the preparation for writing, I became sick. Perhaps like Bob Dylan sings, I was 'sick of love' but also subject to the toxicity in the darkness of the subject matter. My ambivalence to engaging is as much an aspect of the journey as the cognitive exploration. It is a transference to the material. It is dangerous and I have suffered in previous engagements. And it is the nature of such enquiries that they involve attempting to digest what has previously seemed poisonous.

Continuing directly from part 1, Robertson extends Winnicott's concept of the 'false self' - a defensive retreat from reality and external pressure - to what he terms a collective 'False World': a cultural fantasy of separation from ecological limits, exemplified by notions of escaping to other planets rather than reckoning with life on this one. He argues that relinquishing this false world is difficult precisely because so much has been invested in maintaining it. Drawing on the bidirectional coupling between earth systems and human social systems, Robertson explores how climate science's early focus on human impacts on the planet has increasingly given way to recognising feedback effects on humans themselves - forced migration, disease, infertility, conflict - and situates eco-anxiety within this entanglement as a complex mix of care, grief and complicity that can act as a catalyst for change rather than only a source of paralysis. The essay closes by considering what psychological and cultural practices might support staying at this 'cusp' rather than retreating from it, drawing on Hillman, Baldwin, and contemporary climate psychology research on young people's climate anxiety and moral injury.

In this first of a two-part essay, Robertson explores the psychological experience of living through what he calls a cultural 'cusp' - a tipping point between two states, evoking both dread and fertile possibility. Drawing on Timothy Morton's concept of 'hyperobjects' (phenomena too vast to be fully comprehended, which dissolve the usual separation between observing subject and observed object), Robertson argues that climate change is not simply an unsolved problem but an unthinkable one, and that humans are entangled within it rather than observing it from outside. He explores an embodied, felt sense of 'cusping' as an alternative to conceptual abstraction, and connects the cultural cusp to personal experiences of symbolic death and transition - drawing on his own retirement after thirty years co-founding a psychotherapy training centre as an example of rupture, loss and renewal. The essay draws on Hillman, Bion, Winnicott and Freud's concept of the uncanny to explore what it might mean to stay present with radical uncertainty rather than seeking premature resolution or escape.

Written by a group of Filipino researchers and mental health practitioners, this piece argues that as one of the world's most climate-vulnerable countries, the Philippines urgently needs to attend to the climate change-mental health nexus. Although health is recognised as a priority sector in the country's Climate Change Act and its Nationally Determined Contributions, mental health effects specifically remain unacknowledged in national climate and health policy, despite escalating typhoon intensity and displacement. The authors set out a research and policy agenda for the coming decade, recommending attention to both acute disaster-related distress and the slower psychological effects of climate change, and call for multidisciplinary, inclusive action bringing together psychologists, health professionals, social scientists, policymakers and affected communities, alongside rapid decarbonisation as a form of mental health promotion at a planetary scale.

Responding to a paper on 'Five Best Practice Insights from Psychological Sciences', Lertzman argues that mainstream climate communication draws on only a narrow sliver of psychology - cognitive, behavioural and social psychology - while overlooking psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic insights into loss, denial and the limits of purely positive, gain-framed messaging.

ABSTRACT (open access, CC BY-NC 4.0): The climate crisis has wide-ranging mental health impacts, but quantifying these is difficult due to the lack of standardized definitions and tools. This systematic review aims to identify and evaluate the psychometric instruments used to measure emotions related to the climate crisis, assessing their characteristics and gaps. Using PRISMA and COSMIN guidelines, the authors covered articles on self-report measures of eco-emotions and identified ten scales, four focusing on anxiety and six on other negative emotions. Most instruments were developed in the Global North, and six were multidimensional. The most common emotions measured were worry, anxiety, fear, and sadness, and nearly all scales included a behavioural or a cognitive dimension.