Research and resources, shaped by those doing the work

This qualitative study explores how therapists in Australia experience climate change personally and professionally, and how they navigate the dialectic between the two. Findings suggest that although the mental health impacts of global warming are increasingly documented, these issues remain inadequately addressed within psychotherapeutic training and practice, revealing a gap between the growing evidence base on climate-related psychological distress and the profession's readiness to respond. The study calls for further research into how individual therapists can integrate their own climate responses with clinical work, and for professional bodies to provide leadership, training and support.

Masters Thesis, Smith College School for Social Work (Seaman, 2016): The scientific community has reached near consensus that climate change (also known as anthropogenic global warming) poses a significant and potentially dire threat to the ecosystems upon which we, as humans and as a society, rest. While climate change is most often discussed in terms of its effect on the natural environment, its psychological impacts are also expected to be immense and varied and include indirect distress related to the threat that climate change poses. This thesis explores how mental health clinicians receive and respond to indirect psychological impacts of climate change in the therapeutic setting.

Explores eco-anxiety, eco-grief and eco-art therapy as responses to climate-related mental health challenges.

This survey-based study examines how climate-related emotions intersect with parenting and birthing decisions in the United States, with particular attention to racial difference. Participants were asked about their emotional responses to climate change generally, and separately about their emotions relating to birthing and raising children in the context of the climate crisis. The study finds that non-white respondents were more likely than white respondents to report feeling traumatised by climate change and to plan smaller families as a result of climate-related emotions, while also being more likely to report hope and optimism regarding both climate change and parenting under its shadow. White women were the least likely group to report positive emotions about parenting during climate change, while white men were the most likely to report emotional numbness, indifference or disengagement. Religious affiliation also shaped emotional responses, with Christian respondents more likely to report positive emotions overall. The study highlights significant racial differences in how climate emotions shape reproductive and parenting decisions.

Written for the British Psychoanalytic Council's climate change special issue, exploring a mindset Weintrobe terms 'Noah's Arkism' - the fantasy that a privileged few can secure their own safety while the wider world faces climate catastrophe.