Executive Overview
Sometime in the late 2000s, a six-year-old Pim Sullivan-Tailyour sat in the back of a car traversing the rugged landscapes of southern Thailand. Outside her window, massive mountain ranges loomed, but something was profoundly wrong. "They were just quarried out," she recalls, describing how half a mountain had vanished, leaving behind a stark, jagged, orange scar. Family stories told of her mother bathing in a local river whose waters had once been glass-clear, teeming with visible fish. Now, industrial extraction had transformed it into a turbid, muddy stream.
In that moment, a child experienced an adult-size realization: humans could alter the world, and they were doing it for the worse.
Years later, that foundational grief would evolve into deep-seated isolation when Sullivan-Tailyour, having moved to the United Kingdom, found herself serving as the lone environmental voice in her school. Like millions of adolescents globally, she was grappling with a heavy existential load. Today, this phenomenon is widely recognized as eco-anxiety—a chronic, anticipatory fear of environmental doom. Yet, environmental degradation is no longer an isolated worry. Young people are coming of age amid a sprawling "polycrisis": a compounding convergence of a warming planet, pandemic disruptions, geopolitical conflicts, economic precarity, housing unaffordability, the rise of authoritarianism, and the relentless, polarizing hum of digital echo chambers powered by artificial intelligence.
In response to this multi-layered distress, a new ecosystem of youth-focused support networks—ranging from online programs like Force of Nature to localized workshops like GGN-Z—has emerged. These initiatives are moving away from traditional climate doomism, pivoting instead toward emotional validation, community building, and actionable resilience. However, as psychological researchers point out, the empirical evidence backing these interventions remains nascent. Experts across the globe are now racing to measure what actually works, ensuring that the next generation is not merely comforted, but genuinely equipped to face an uncertain future.
Detailed Chronology: From Personal Awakening to Global Networks
To understand the mechanics of contemporary youth anxiety, one must trace its evolution from isolated personal realizations to coordinated global interventions.
The Seeds of Awareness (Late 2000s)
Long before "eco-anxiety" became a fixture of psychological literature, children across the world were independently registering the friction between human industrial progress and planetary health. Whether it was Pim Sullivan-Tailyour witnessing the dynamic erosion of Thai mountainsides or children elsewhere viewing images of melting glaciers and starving polar bears, the initial phase of eco-anxiety typically begins with a sudden, jarring loss of innocence. Psychologists term this "pre-traumatic stress"—an anticipatory grief for ecosystems and futures lost before they can be fully experienced.
The Great Isolation and the Digital Pivot (2019–2021)
As these children matured into teenagers during the late 2010s, many experienced intense isolation. Climate activism often felt like a solitary burden carried within school environments unequipped to handle existential distress.
This dynamic shifted dramatically in 2019 when Clover Hogan founded Force of Nature as a teenager, just as the COVID-19 pandemic forced global interactions online. Recognizing that traditional activism often led to burnout, the organization launched Becoming a Force of Nature in 2021. Designed as an informal online group therapy program hosted via Zoom, it brought together dozens of young people from multiple countries. For participants like Sullivan-Tailyour, logging onto these sessions shattered the illusion of solitude. They realized that their peers around the world shared the exact same fears.
Broadening the Scope: From Climate to Polycrisis (2024–Present)
As these networks matured, program leaders noticed a critical pattern: young people were not just anxious about carbon counts and rising sea levels. Their distress was holistic, intersecting with cost-of-living crises, political polarization, and social decay.
Consequently, organizations like Force of Nature began pivoting away from strict, climate-exclusive language. By 2024 and 2025, outreach efforts expanded to welcome discussions on economic insecurity, democratic backsliding, and systemic instability. Simultaneously, offline initiatives like GGN-Z—a youth-adapted offshoot of the Michigan-based Good Grief Network—began deploying experiential, action-oriented frameworks in physical classrooms, utilizing interactive tools like the "bad news graffiti wall" to help teens externalize and process their collective anxieties.
Supporting Context & Metrics: The Anatomy of the Polycrisis
The psychological burden carried by Generation Z is not merely anecdotal; it is documented by a growing body of rigorous scientific literature.
The Landmark Lancet Study
In 2021, a landmark study published in The Lancet Planetary Health surveyed 10,000 children and young people aged 16 to 25 across 10 countries. The findings were stark:
- 60% of respondents reported being very or extremely worried about climate change.
- 45% stated that their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily ability to function and sleep.
- 56% agreed with the definitive statement, "Humanity is doomed."
The Polycrisis Syndrome
Subsequent research has sought to quantify the broader societal stressors compounding these environmental fears. A 2025 study by Polish researchers examined "polycrisis syndrome" among young adults entering the workforce amidst a volatile global landscape. Utilizing established metrics such as the Flourishing Index and the Difficulties in Emotional Regulation Scale, the researchers found that more than 60% of participants reported clinically significant psychological challenges—including emotional dysregulation, depressive symptoms, and diminished overall well-being—attributable directly to the cumulative stress of world affairs.
Historical Parallels: Looking Back at the Cold War
While Gen Z’s anxiety feels unprecedented in its complexity, historical precedents offer valuable context. During the height of the Cold War in the early 1980s, surveys revealed high levels of existential dread among young Baby Boomers and elder Gen Xers. A 1980 survey of high school seniors across 48 U.S. states found that roughly 35% believed nuclear or biological annihilation would occur within their lifetimes, while a Gallup poll from the same era showed that 49% felt nuclear war directly influenced their long-term life planning.
However, researchers note a distinct cultural shift in resilience. While 1980s youth harbored severe nuclear anxieties, a majority still adhered to the belief that "the human race has come through tough times before and will do so again." Modern youth, by contrast, frequently grapple with a fractured social contract, mourning not just the state of the planet, but the perceived failure of institutional leaders to protect their future.
Official Statements and Expert Perspectives
As therapeutic networks proliferate, mental health professionals and organizational leaders are evaluating the structural efficacy of these programs.
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Liza Jachens, Psychologist and Assistant Professor at the University of Nottingham School of Medicine:
Describing the nature of eco-anxiety, Jachens notes, "The American Psychological Association calls it a ‘chronic fear of environmental doom.’ What people describe is closer to grief. A real sense of loss—not just fear of what is coming but mourning for what has already gone." Furthermore, emphasizing the power of validation, she observes: "When people feel genuinely heard and held in their distress, they tend to move quite naturally toward wanting to do something." -
Caroline Hickman, Psychotherapist and Lead Researcher of the Lancet Planetary Health Study:
Hickman highlights the betrayal felt by the younger generation regarding institutional oversight: "Whatever your politics, we have this expectation that faith leaders, school leaders, community leaders, government officials, will look after us and have our best interests at heart, and that social contract was being broken repeatedly." She asserts that grief and anxiety are entirely rational responses to this systemic failure.
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Clover Hogan, Founder of Force of Nature:
Addressing the paralyzing perfectionism common among young activists, Hogan’s foundational philosophy centers on practical, imperfect engagement: "We don’t need 100 perfect activists but millions of imperfect ones." -
Britta Eklöf, Swedish Clinical Psychologist:
Drawing from her work with the Climate Emotion School—which incorporates the eco-emotions research of scholar Panu Pihkala—Eklöf stresses the importance of moving away from parental soothing and toward shared emotional reality: "The recommendation instead is to validate and share. And then, of course, give them something they can do."
Future Outlook: Measuring Impact and Cultivating Resilience
The overarching challenge facing the field of eco-therapy and youth mental health support is a distinct lack of empirical measurement. Systematic reviews—such as a 2021 scoping review by Jachens and a subsequent 2024 review led by Siqi Xue of the University of Toronto—reveal that while dozens of programs exist, only a tiny fraction have undergone formal, published evaluation.
Recognizing this gap, organizations are beginning to mobilize. Force of Nature has joined the Youth Mental Wellbeing project, a five-year, 25-organization collaborative initiative designed to spotlight proven methods for supporting young people on their mental health journeys. Similarly, the designers of GGN-Z are actively deploying survey tools to quantify whether their experiential workshops measurably improve emotional regulation and well-being among teens.
For young advocates like Pim Sullivan-Tailyour—who recently graduated from King’s College London and now facilitates in-person "climate cafes"—the journey has come full circle. By moving past the paralysis of isolation and recognizing that environmental, political, and social crises are deeply interconnected, she finds inspiration not just in modern activism, but in historical resilience.
Experts like Eklöf advocate for integrating history into therapeutic interventions—studying figures like the suffragettes, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and monumental environmental victories like the repair of the ozone layer through the Montreal Protocol. By looking to the past, young people are reminded that human societies have repeatedly navigated existential precipices and emerged transformed.
Ultimately, the polycrisis will not resolve overnight. The world remains volatile, complex, and rapidly changing. Yet, by building evidence-based support structures, validating systemic grief, and encouraging localized, imperfect action, programs like Force of Nature and GGN-Z are helping a generation transition from paralyzing dread to active, enduring resilience.
