Reporter: Global warming. Animals and plants dying. Food and water shortages. This end of the world scenario is enough to make anyone shutter.
Melissa Pickett: People are afraid of the future. They’re afraid of what’s going to happen.
Reporter: Fear over the future is real according to therapist Melissa Pickett. She says news about the environment is sending people into a panic and in some cases, into counseling.
Melissa: She brought up during the course of our session that she had just read an article about the polar bears and their loss of habitat. She starting crying and said, I just don’t understand this.
Reporter: The diagnosis for this growing mental health disorder has been dubbed as eco-anxiety.
Cynthia Knudsen, MD: It’s causing them to feel anxiety. It’s causing them to feel depression. It’s causing them to feel insomnia.
Debra Kincaid: Or it can almost make you want to bury your head in the sand with a sense of helplessness.
Reporter: Debra Kincaid is so gripped by the environment and the future of the planet that she can’t even bear to throw away a coffee maker, choosing to have it repaired instead.
Debra: If everybody tosses their coffee maker into the landfill, pretty soon that’s all we’ll have.
Melissa: They think they have to make really large changes in their lives. The truth is, it’s the little things that matter.
Reporter: Little things such as recycling, turning off the lights, unplugging electrical items, carpooling, and getting back in touch with nature can go a long way to ease eco-anxiety. For Debra, ridding her bike to work instead of driving helps her sleep at night
Debra: I’m hoping that we can take some steps forward to fix those problems…
Reporter: And eco-anxiety.
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