Climate, coronavirus ... What is eco-anxiety, this new disease affecting young people?

High heat, fires ... We are increasingly confronted with the consequences of global warming.

And this disruption sometimes has unexpected impacts.

On the morale of the French, for example, and in particular the youngest.

A phenomenon known as eco-anxiety and which is defined by depression linked to the continuous degradation of the environment.

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An increasingly frequent phenomenon

It is indeed a form of anxiety which can even paralyze and lead, in the most serious cases, to true depression. A phenomenon difficult to quantify, but which according to the psychologists contacted by Europe 1, is more and more frequent. But above all, there are even more people who evoke such symptoms as climate disasters materialize before our eyes. Because this reality has triggered a real trigger, as explained by Alice Desbiolles, public health doctor and specialist in the subject. "We are not born eco-anxious, we become so as long as we are interested in data from the IPCC or that we perceive a little environmental news. This is also why often, when 'we are eco-anxious, we stay that way ",she asserts.

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Channel this anxiety into a force

The challenge for professionals is therefore to channel this anxiety into a force. The objective is therefore to overcome anxiety by taking concrete action, according to psychologist Pierre-Eric Sutter. "From the moment when young people have this awareness, they will campaign or get involved in more concrete projects, such as founding a school or even shared farms in order to organize the energy transition by themselves.", he explains. Be careful not to fall into the opposite excess, warn psychologists. Neither should we seek to shoulder too great a responsibility alone, since the problem is global and cannot be solved on the individual scale alone.