Mental health and saving the planet – Clarissa Brincat

In June 2021, a video went viral on TikTok. Under that video, the most-liked comment was: “Honestly… kinda makes me want to unalive myself even sooner.”

‘Unalive myself’ is TikTok slang for suicide. Another read: “I don’t want to be here anymore. I literally don’t want to live anymore. There’s no point.”

Many other comments echoed the same feelings of fear, anxiety, grief, anger and helplessness. 2021 saw the world still firmly in the grip of the COVID pandemic, so you would be justified in assuming that the video which triggered such angst among TikTok users was about the pandemic.

But that wasn’t the case. The viral video was a 60-second summary of the frightening effects of climate change, based on the findings of a United Nations draft report that had been leaked to the media some days earlier.

Was the TikTok community’s strong emotional response a one-off incident or simply a case of teenage angst? Unfortunately, not.

‘Eco-anxiety’ has entered the English dictionary and is defined as “extreme worry about current and future harm to the environment caused by human activity and climate change”.

Oxford Languages recorded a 4,290 per cent increase in usage of the term...