WEF: Eco-anxiety a Driver of the Mental Health Pandemic
By Igor Chudov | November 9, 2022
Big news from the World Economic Forum’s agenda article: Eco-anxiety is a major mental health issue for our young people.
67% of young people are concerned about the impact of climate change on their mental health.
Reread this, please!
They are not merely worried about climate change. They are concerned about the impact of worrying about “climate change” on their MENTAL HEALTH!
Since many of my readers are not currently suffering from eco-anxiety, some may not immediately understand the mental struggle. But it is real, I assure you.
So bad is the climate change anxiety that there exists a “Climate Psychiatry Alliance,” an organization of psychiatrists helping those suffering from climate change anxiety. Watch the co-founder of “Climate Psychiatry Alliance” explain her work helping sufferers of climate anxiety.
World Economic Forum’s article acknowledges that there is a mental health pandemic caused by eco-anxiety:
Identifying as female, using social media, and having a sense of helplessness all increase susceptibility to this new global mental health pandemic.
Fortunately, the WEF has a suggestion on how to cope with climate anxiety: engage in activism. A young sufferer of climate change anxiety Sofia Palau, did just that. To alleviate her sense of helplessness, she joined a youth climate activism group, “Youth vs. Apocalypse,” whose purpose is actually to create MORE climate anxiety:
No doubt, like most in-groups, “Youth vs. Apocalypse” take pains to validate and normalize their climate anxieties. Having “climate change panic attacks” is a matter of course for them and is celebrated.
Recruiting more young people into their climate advocacy group reaffirms their general outlook. It finds an outlet for frustrations that rule its members. Watch the video if you want.
The WEF agenda article explains the theoretical underpinnings:
While emotion-focused coping has been the most common strategy used by adolescents and young adults to date, research has found that meaning-focused coping is the most effective in regards to eco-anxiety. When done correctly, meaning-focused coping, such as getting involved in the fight against climate change through volunteering or campaigning, facilitates positive emotions like hope without ignoring negative ones like anger or anxiety.
The end result is processing, rather than getting stuck in, anxiety and feeling motivated to engage in activism and other pro-environmental behavior.
What is the result? More and more anxiety-affected young people suffering from real mental health problems, with adults in charge recommending that they get together and recruit more people who would also be made to suffer from climate anxiety.
The likely outcome is mass psychosis or mass formation of people who are good and well-intentioned but stuck in an anxiety-ridden in-group circular dynamic.
This pandemic of climate fear is not entirely dissimilar to the “mass formation” that Matias Desmet discussed so many times concerning whipping up fear during the Covid pandemic. Is the climate anxiety mass formation purely accidental? Not really.
All this is facilitated by rich old men with well-positioned investments, of course.
The press, sponsored by the same rich old men, intentionally creates climate anxiety in people also:
Kids are particularly targeted with child-friendly but anxiety-provoking messaging:
Please be Respectful to Your Own Kids!
I hope my somewhat tongue-in-cheek but completely accurate retelling of what is going on in the mental health/climate activism world was interesting and perhaps made you smile.
Do NOT, please, make my story into a justification to dismiss your children! If your children, or young friends, suffer from climate anxiety, remember that
- they are human beings
- they base their emotions on what they see on TV and on their social feeds
- that stuff is important to them
- rebelliousness is a part of growing up
- anxiety, helplessness, and hysteria do NOT need to be parts of growing up
- we live in an uncertain world, and some of their concerns may be justified
- the number one goal is NOT to lose their trust and respect
- never dismiss them as persons or make fun of their anxieties
Any parent whose child has ANY anxiety needs to engage with the child, listen to them, NOT be judgmental, offer support, etc. Our children are NOT copies of ourselves (I bet you changed compared to when you were 16 also,) and we cannot force them to think the way we want.
A bonus is instilling a sense of self-reliance and internal locus of control in your children so that they do not feel “helplessness” and are not compelled to be a part of groups to normalize their anxieties. Helplessness drives many bad decisions and affects mental and physical health.
I am not a child psychiatrist or anything, but if my own hypothetical daughter (I have two great sons) suffered from climate anxiety, I would listen to her extensively. Then I would plant trees with her and make her dig big holes (the bigger, the better) to plant larger trees. Small trees are too easy. Perhaps plant a garden to “use less diesel fuel to grow food.”
Challenge some of their most anxiety-provoking beliefs without dismissing them. Explain how this tree needs CO2 to grow. That could give the child a sense of purpose and balance instead of falling prey to lunatic groups like “Youth Apocalypse.”
If you, my reader, disagree with me, you are welcome to comment and explain why.
My message would be remiss without noting that we, Covid-skeptics, also form an in-group with a very special narrative. Being vilified and targeted by the media, of course, does not help. Worrying about our health and loved ones could also create anxiety — oftentimes justified. A sense of helplessness among the unvaccinated was purposely instilled:
I am also, frankly, worried about what will happen with excess mortality and reduction in births!
Thus, we could be susceptible to the same challenges as some climate-anxious young people. So let’s make sure that we keep each other challenged, debate, and use our virtual gatherings to at least somewhat alleviate our anxieties instead of always whipping them up.
I am personally guilty of making several anxiety–provoking posts. I kind of realized that a while ago and try to mix them with good news to keep the balance.
Sorry if I sound too opinionated. Guilty as charged.
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From the Archives
Ronald Reagan’s Torture
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | September 8, 2009
The 2004 CIA Inspector General’s report, released in August 2009, referenced as “background” to the Bush-era abuses the spy agency’s “intermittent involvement in the interrogation of individuals whose interests are opposed to those of the United States.” The report noted “a resurgence in interest” in teaching those techniques in the early 1980s “to foster foreign liaison relationships.”
The report said, “because of political sensitivities,” the CIA’s top brass in the 1980s “forbade Agency officers from using the word ‘interrogation” and substituted the phrase “human resources exploitation” [HRE] in training programs for allied intelligence agencies.
The euphemism aside, the reality of these interrogation techniques remained brutal, with the CIA Inspector General conducting a 1984 investigation of alleged “misconduct on the part of two Agency officers who were involved in interrogations and the death of one individual,” the report said (although the details were redacted in the version released to the public).
In 1984, the CIA also was hit with a scandal over what became known as an “assassination manual” prepared by agency personnel for the Nicaraguan Contras, a rebel group sponsored by the Reagan administration with the goal of ousting Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government.
Despite those two problems, the questionable training programs apparently continued for another two years. The 2004 IG report states that “in 1986, the Agency ended the HRE training program because of allegations of human rights abuses in Latin America.”
While the report’s references to this earlier era of torture are brief – and the abuses are little-remembered features of Ronald Reagan’s glorified presidency – there have been other glimpses into how Reagan unleashed this earlier “dark side” on the peasants, workers and students of Central America. … continue
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I appreciate your well placed sarcasm throughout this article. I fear that you may be overemphasizing the needed empathy for our children’s concerns that are being stoked by many a false narrative. If you want to instill a proper balance in the youth, we need to turn off the TV, stop living inside our phones, open the Bible and see what the Creator of everything has to say about life on earth. If we, as parents, did not stay in a loving but alert closeness to our kids, helping them see truth instead of propaganda and corrupt thinking, we cannot hope to protect them from it now, once their mind has been shaped by it. The consequence of such resulting helplessness, of course, will become “mass formation”, with the planned stampede of the masses off the cliff. Notice that the whole climate change movement started by false assumptions originating with Al Gore. They were promoted and amplified despite opposing scientific evidence and the masses accepted them. Now we are stoking the problem even more by listening to the likes of Greta Thunberg, Bill Gates and others, and pretending that a legitimate psychiatric condition exists which requires more “erroneous” counseling and probably prescription drugs, and money from the Federal government (your taxes). Conveniently concurrent is the push to silence any truth that opposes the prevailing narrative that is promoted by the originators of evil. Either we get our fellow man to open his/her eyes to see truth and stand for it, or we all go down into the coming Dark Ages.
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“Fortunately, the WEF has a suggestion on how to cope with climate anxiety”:
we need to turn off the TV, stop living inside our phones, open the Bible and see what the Creator of everything has to say about life on earth”.
“Surely you can’t be serious”? Religion is completely illogical, and utterly unverifiable. “What have they ever done for us”?
Unsurprisingly, Bill Gates, and “Creepy Klaus Schwab” are behind this scam, having realised that they have flogged the dead horse of Covid, for too long.
I have a very simple rule now. If Schwab and Gates are involved, treat what they say with utter contempt.
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I wasn’t aware that the WEF is suggesting the same things that I am. If they are, some dramatic changes have taken place. When did they suggest that we follow Bible principles instead of control of the masses via wealth and technology? Perhaps you utterly misunderstood what I said.
I never said that “religion” did anything for us. I am definitely stating that the moral principles of the Bible, coupled with the original freedom that America enjoyed, created the wealthiest and most powerful nation in history. If not, I challenge you to come up with a set of ethics of higher order that we can live by. And then how will we evaluate the superiority of your standards? By contrast, as is obvious by all the world turmoil of our day, deviation from those ancient principles, on which our Constitution is founded, is resulting in potential collapse of the current civilization that we have enjoyed. Such irrational thinking has brought us some of the most stressful and dangerous conditions in history. Apparently you cannot identify the origins of the success called “early America”, to which people from every Nation were flocking to.
Yes, we need to turn off the propaganda that endlessly flows from our TV, our phones, and the Greta Thunbergs, Bill Gates and Al Gores of the world and get back to critical thinking, honesty, and justice toward all. I agree with your comments about Bill Gates, Schwab and the rest.
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the author is dumb for saying you must sit down and understand your kids sickness. I say that girl palau should be thrown out and all money cut off or any other kid like her. parents created these delicate monsters like the wat greta thunberg was created by her communist parents
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Have yu ever tried growing your own food? When yu do. Yu soon discover yu need water, lots of it. Yu also need fertiliser, compost doesn’t cut it, you’d starve to death before yu had enough. Pests love humans growing their own food. All chemicals required to control them cost money, lots of it, and many are derived from fossil fuels. Don’t take my word for it, try it on, prove me wrong.
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