5 Comments
23 hrs ago·edited 23 hrs agoLiked by Sapphi

Massive props to the Parent for being engaged with their Childs education & being socially aware enough to pick up on the dissonant nature of these pamphlets. I've become a strong believer that change must start from the grass roots. Something as simple as a Parent reading a pamphlet brought home by their child & bringing attention to it, can have a butterfly effect. We won't see that effect immediately but something tells me to "watch this space".

There is a reason why "I am hope" is one of the few(possibly) only organizations involved in mental health that has had their funding INCREASED instead of decreased or chopped altogether. We will possibly find that out in a year or two.

Expand full comment
author

Absolutely, a totally dystopian dissemination that this parent picked up on quickly and made a fuss over. Kudos.

We are seeing the structures of democracy tested globally right now and some of those structures that are being pushed are the petty-seeming rules and guidelines around ‘transparency’ that aren’t that taboo to break on a small scale but exist for very good reasons…

2024? More like 1984…

Expand full comment

Seeing 'climate anxiety' in kids, especially when promoted by major polluters, feels off. I'm also a proponent of relabelling this because "anxiety" pathologises and individualises a normal response to the legitimate crisis we’re facing. It’s not just anxiety. It’s more 'ecological grief', a sign of deep connection and love for the planet. I wrote about it quite a bit, including this piece here (https://entangledcuriosities.substack.com/p/if-ecological-grief-and-i-had-a-coffee). If Fonterra, Genesis and Z truly want to reconfigure their core mission, they should back real solutions: NOT stalling in renewable transition, encouraging farmers to seek alternate farming options away from dairy, and promoting alternatives to driving. Until then, this feels like greenwashing.

Expand full comment
author
5 hrs ago·edited 5 hrs agoAuthor

It’s anxiety in a sense that we have a rough definition of anxiety that has about seven sub-categories, and this doesn’t fit under any of them but is a new presentation of anxiety. It’s definitely pathologising it but you do need to do that if you want to treat the person, which we do, (? i guess), even if the better solution is to fix the planet (which we can do, but don’t want to??).

It’s a pretty interesting “new condition” and I doubt it’s exclusive to children, it’s just that the anxiety that builds up is able to manifest more traditionally as social anxiety disorder or generalised anxiety disorder or whatever in adults.

Climate anxiety exists as a condition because children are getting stressed about a real circumstance that is not being alleviated for them, only worsened.

And that’s the background for a lot more childhood psych diagnoses than just climate anxiety.

Expand full comment
5 hrs agoLiked by Sapphi

Jesus that's really bloody troubling.

Expand full comment