Research and resources, shaped by those doing the work

Editorial introducing a special issue of Journal of Social Work Practice arising from a December 2018 Tavistock and Portman/CPA conference, exploring what psychoanalysis, philosophy, science and activism can contribute to understanding and communicating about ecological disaster and the eco-anxiety it provokes.

Whilst awareness of the importance and urgency of acting to mitigate anthropogenicenvironmental change is generally high, adaptive responses have matched neitherthe scale nor the complex nature of the challenge. Inertia at individual andorganisational levels is a troubling conundrum.In this paper, we analyse the psychosocial factors at work for individuals attemptingto influence their organisations’ pro-environmental actions. Our study focuses on sixindividuals with pro-environmental values who have formal roles in their organisationwith regard to environmental policy, strategy and practice.

This book from the Green House collective offers climate honesty. The time for focusing primarily on mitigation is over. We now need to adapt to the dark reality of climate breakdown. But this means a deep reframing of our entire way of life. The book explores how transformative adaptation might enable us to confront escalating climate chaos while not giving up hope.Facing up to Climate Reality is a book for those brave enough to abandon the illusion of continuing normality, and embark on a harder, truer journey.

Drawing on Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, this study explores the lived experience of six sustainability professionals and leaders in the UK and Canada. It identifies key psychosocial factors shaping their experience - particularly psychological threat-coping strategies, psychological needs, motivation and vitality - and models the complex interactions and trade-offs between them, including tensions between competency, relatedness and autonomy needs and coping strategies such as suppression of negative emotion and a threatened 'deep green' identity.

Nature connectedness tends to be understood as a relatively stable trait, studied using survey-based methods. But this approach is not well suited to investigating the nuances and unconscious processes of subjective experience. This paper addresses these limitations by using an alternative approach. I analyze the lived experience of nature connectedness using a post-positivist transdisciplinary methodology integrating IPA with frames and metaphor analysis from an ecolinguistics perspective.

This is an essay about belonging. It is also about connection, identity and shame. What is it about the sight and sound of Swifts, swooping and circling, shrieking and calling, that gets to me so much? After almost 30 years living elsewhere, this was one of the things I was most excited about, to enjoy the Swifts once again, over and over, in the long evening light of an Edinburgh summer. It had tugged and tugged on my soul for years, so when it didn’t happen I was devastated, distraught.

In facing up to the reality of the climate crisis and the risks it poses, people encounter powerful emotions that can be difficult to bear. Consequently, various defences and coping strategies may be used to suppress or avoid feeling these emotions. The way in which emotions are regulated has important implications for wellbeing and decision-making. In recent years there has been growing interest in using citizens' assemblies to inform government climate policy. Assembly members learn about and discuss the subject, and produce recommendations for action. Given this element of learning about climate change, it is likely that difficult emotions will come up for assembly members. This paper investigates the emotional experience of members of Scotland's Climate Assembly to explore which, if any, emotions are experienced and how they are regulated.

This chapter discusses the need for robust psychologies in the context of the devastating global health impacts of climate breakdown, with particular focus on the psychological impacts. It describes temperature effects (suicide and other deaths, especially in the vulnerable), the traumatic impacts of repeated and one-off climate change related weather events, and the many varieties of eco-distress. It reflects on the profound and complex psychologies associated with inaction, avoidance and a clinging to ‘business as usual’ in high- and middle-income countries.

This book introduces readers to the known psychological aspects of climate change as a pressing global concern and explores how they are relevant to current and future clinical practice.Arguing that it is vital for ecological concerns to enter the therapy room, this book calls for change from regulatory bodies, training institutes and individual practitioners. The book includes original thinking and research by practitioners from a range of perspectives, including psychodynamic, eco-systemic and integrative. It considers how our different modalities and ways of working need to be adapted to be applicable to the ecological crises.