Rethinking ecoanxiety through environmental moral distress: an ethics reflection

Area of Science:

• Environmental Psychology
• Ethics
• Sociology

Background:

• Humanity faces unprecedented environmental crises, including mass extinction and climate change.
• These crises increasingly impact mental health, leading to concepts like ecoanxiety.
• Medicalizing ecoanxiety risks individualizing distress and ignoring social/political dimensions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose reconsidering ecological emotions through the lens of moral distress.
• To contextualize ecological emotions within social, political, and ethical frameworks.
• To challenge the medicalized view of ecoanxiety.

Main Methods:

• Conceptual analysis and ethical re-framing of ecological emotions.
• Critique of psychological perspectives on ecoanxiety.
• Advocacy for an ethics of care and ecofeminist paradigm.

Main Results:

• Environmental moral distress highlights the social and political dimensions of ecological emotions.
• This perspective reveals the entanglement of ecological emotions with ethical concerns.
• Medicalized views of ecoanxiety fail to recognize these broader contexts.

Conclusions:

• Viewing ecological emotions as moral distress shifts focus from individual pathology to collective responsibility.
• An ethics of care and ecofeminist approach are crucial for addressing environmental moral distress.
• This reframing empowers collective action and moral agency in ecological struggles.