How to Counsel for Climate Anxiety

A human head made of leafy tree branches, with bare branches at the crown of the head where the brain would be. — Image Credit: wildpixel

Over the past five years, Caroline Hickman, a lecturer at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom and a climate-aware psychotherapist, has seen the number of requests from prospective patients struggling with climate anxiety quadruple. What was once a small portion of her client docket now dominates her therapy practice.

She’s not alone. Research shows that 54 percent of therapists in Germany have seen clients presenting with environmental or ecological concerns over the past year. Therapists in the United States appear to be experiencing something similar.

“There definitely has been a significant increase in the need to address climate and other existential threats in the therapy room,” Jenni Silverstein, co-executive director of the nonprofit Climate Psychology Alliance of North America, told NPQ in an interview.

The demand for therapists to counsel for emotions related to the climate—including grief, anxiety, and despair—is in line with what Hickman explains as a heightened awareness of the severity of the climate crisis.

In 2025, the United States experienced 23 extreme weather events, including flooding in Texas, wildfires in Los Angeles, and tornadoes in the Northeast. These events cost billions in repairs and were responsible for the loss of at least 276 lives.

This is in contrast to the five documented extreme weather events that happened in 2000. What once may have been an issue happening in far-flung places globally now feels—and is—closer to home.

Some people feel the climate has become so politicized that it’s not safe to talk about.

“[Higher prevalence of concern] is not necessarily a bad thing, because eco-anxiety is simply the beginning of a process of consciousness raising,” psychologist Thomas Joseph Doherty told NPQ.

The challenge is when someone doesn’t have the tools to manage the heaviness that comes with witnessing news cycles of—or, for that matter, surviving—natural disasters and feeling concern for the future of the planet.

Not Safe to Talk About

“It’s really hard to tolerate and to emotionally regulate around so you switch between fear and disbelief…there’s a lot of turmoil in that for people,” Hickman said.

The turmoil people are experiencing around the climate crisis isn’t helped by conflicting messages from leaders such as President Donald Trump, who has a record of denying climate science. His administration has reversed policies put in place to protect the environment, such as the 2009 Endangerment Finding.

Some people feel the climate has become so politicized that it’s not safe to talk about, according to Doherty, who wrote Surviving Climate Anxiety: A Guide to Coping, Healing, and Thriving to help those who feel isolated by the issue.

More than 40 percent of Americans feel climate change is impacting their mental health, according to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), which officially recognizes eco-anxiety and eco-grief as growing mental health concerns. And the number of people who report being “alarmed” by the issue has more than doubled over the past decade, according to the Yale Program for Climate Change Communication.

For Leslie Davenport, a climate psychology educator, author, and climate-aware psychotherapist based in San Francisco, the people in need of counseling fall into three categories:

Those who have been directly impacted by climate disasters
Young people who are climate-aware and fearful
Environmental industry and frontline workers who daily face difficult information about climate events and projections

“It can ultimately be dismissive of a person’s very real and legitimate grief.”

When the Therapist Doesn’t Know What to Do

One issue is that not all therapists, counselors, psychiatrists, and psychotherapists in the United States are equipped to support climate anxiety, according to those professionals who spoke to NPQ, because the ethos behind climate-aware therapy differs from that of traditional therapy.

Being climate-aware means recognizing that “the climate crisis is both a global threat to all life on Earth and a deeply personal threat to the mental and physical well-being…of each individual, family, and community on the planet,” according to the Climate Psychology Alliance North America.

In contrast, mental health professionals are likely to have been taught to treat symptoms like anxiety or depression as individual pathologies to be relieved.

“If a therapist doesn’t have that climate awareness themselves, they may be more inclined, based on our training in school, to try to help a client shift their thoughts or to tell a different story. It can ultimately be dismissive of a person’s very real and legitimate grief,” Chelsea Green, a climate-aware therapist based in Tennessee, told NPQ.

This could cause more damage. Without an official accreditation or a requirement from state-based boards of psychology and counseling for training in climate-triggered distress, mental health professionals’ responses to the issue vary greatly, and many people could be at risk.

This is still an emergent area, Silverstein noted.

“It’s difficult to get support for climate anxiety, but that’s because it’s difficult to get any kind of support.”

“I don’t even think on Psychology Today [a therapist directory], there’s a box to search for climate-aware therapists,” added Green.

Expanding climate-aware support and services requires both political will and funding—both of which are in short supply in the United States right now. In January 2026, the Trump administration cut almost $2 billion in federal grants for substance abuse and mental health services, but quickly reinstated them following backlash.

That amount is already considered wildly inadequate for existing needs, without factoring in the addition of new fields. The APA has stated that more money is needed to fund research to better understand the extent of the impact climate change can have on mental health as well as to develop effective interventions. Overall, mental health is a leading cause of death in the United States.

“It’s difficult to get support for climate anxiety, but that’s because it’s difficult to get any kind of support,” Kate Schapira said to NPQ in an interview. Schapira is the author of Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth, which she wrote following her decade of hosting a booth for people to stop and share their climate worries.

Davenport said she would like to see financial support given through a grant or “visionary donor” to finance widespread training with credentialing boards.

In lieu of official guidance, professionals across the country are banding together in groups such as the Alliance of Climate Therapists-Northwest (ACT-NoW), PsyFuture, the Mental Health and Climate Change Alliance, and online communities such as Climate & Mind and Carbon Conversations.

Some of these groups are creating their own resources to support practitioners. The Climate Psychology Alliance, for example, which is primarily volunteer-run and emulates a British initiative of the same name, runs an online introductory series to climate-aware therapy. Although not accredited, the series provides professionals like Green, who completed the course, a reference point on how best to serve the needs of their clients while also navigating their own feelings around climate change. Many mental health professionals, after all, are drawn to the work because of their own concerns and even first-hand experience.

“I know what it’s like holding this dual role in which you are still a helping professional, and you’re expected to function as a clinician supporting other people’s emotional experience, but you’re also a disaster survivor yourself,” said Silverstein.

She experienced wildfires in her home of Sonoma, CA, between 2017 and 2020. This duality in the therapy room is unique to the profession, she said, and those in mental health have to be mindful of safeguarding their own wellbeing, too.

Action as a Remedy

The need and desire for training in climate-aware mental health is urgent: The Climate Psychology Alliance has seen its membership double between 2023 and 2026. The California Institute of Integral Studies is also seeing demand for its certification program, led by Davenport, which focuses on ways to scale mental health support through innovative community-based solutions.

“Others like myself have created continuing education courses, but we need more, along with lobbying, to have it become a standard training requirement,” said Davenport.

Courses aren’t the only resource people are turning to. A number of books offer support to the public and professionals. Emotional Resiliency in the Era of Climate Change: A Clinician’s Guide is one of four books written by Davenport, while Doherty’s and Schapira’s books cater to those who might not be able to access a climate-aware therapist.

In her book, Schapira encourages action as a remedy, be it contributing to a disaster preparedness plan or volunteering to distribute food at a shelter; while Doherty talks about finding the tools to “stay in the present moment as we clarify our values and clarify directions.”

The hope is that eventually widespread training will enable most therapists to meet the needs of the increasing number of people scared about what the next climate disasters will do to their generation and those to come.

“I think in 10 years, if the trends continue across the mental health field, people will be more sophisticated, and what we will have is different approaches for climate psychology or ecotherapy,” said Doherty.

Until then, mental health professionals make do, mobilizing when they can and manufacturing the tools they need.