DON’T WORRY, SNOWFLAKES
Soppy students get COUNSELLING over ‘global warming anxiety’...
SNOWFLAKE uni students are getting COUNSELLING… because they’re so worried about GLOBAL WARMING!
The University of East Anglia ( UEA) is offering its students a ‘mindfulness’ course to help ease their ‘ecoanxiety’ – a condition that scientists say is spreading fast among the world’s younger population.
The course of six sessions, one per week and each lasting two hours, will begin today after being developed together with mental health charity Norfolk and Waveney Mind.
The university said that eco-anxiety was a ‘direct result of the feelings of grief and distress stemming from the knowledge of climate concerns and its psychological impact’.
Feelings
A UEA spokesperson said: “More widespread support for eco-anxiety has been developed in response to local needs in Norfolk, where people are becoming acutely conscious of rising sea levels as local coastal communities experience coastal erosion.”
Claire Pratt, associate director of student services at UEA, said: “We know that ecoanxiety is a massive issue for our students today, and so we wanted to get involved and do something to tackle these feelings.”
She said that she hoped the course could help students to ‘feel better about climate anxiety and provide a supportive atmosphere for discussion and mindfulness’.
UEA post-graduate student Azza Dirar, who helped design the course, said: “The focus is not on the bleak evidence of climate change and environment degradation, but rather on how we can act with courage and wisdom during a time of looming ecological and societal collapse.”
It comes after a study published in The Lancet declared climate anxiety a ‘widespread’ condition among children and young people around the world.
The study spoke to 10,000 16 to 25-yearolds in the UK, Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Portugal, and the US.
The research found that 59 per cent of young people were ‘ extremely worried’, while 84 per cent were at least ‘moderately worried’, with more than half reporting feeling ‘sad, anxious, powerless, helpless and guilty.’