Local weather change is remodeling our bodily setting and well being, and in addition reshaping our emotional landscapes in profound methods. As subtropical glaciers retreat within the Andes, wildfires sweep throughout continents and open-pit mines increase throughout a number of international locations, inhabitants teams are experiencing a specific type of misery, apart from the nervousness about future local weather impacts: they’re mourning environmental adjustments occurring now, within the locations they name ‘residence’.
Glenn Albrecht, an Australian environmental thinker, coined the time period “solastalgia“ in 2003 to explain this particular emotional expertise: the misery brought on by environmental change in a single’s personal environment, resulting in a lack of solace and leading to emotions of profound disappointment. The phrase blends “solace” (consolation) and “nostalgia” (homesickness), capturing the peculiar grief of being homesick whereas nonetheless at residence, as residence itself transforms round you. Now, over 20 years for the reason that idea emerged, researchers are starting to systematically look at whether or not solastalgia contributes to psychological well being issues, and whether or not it would signify a key mechanism linking local weather change to psychological misery.
This scoping evaluate by Vela Sandquist and colleagues (2025), revealed in BMJ Psychological Well being, represents a novel try and synthesise quantitative proof on this relationship. Understanding solastalgia issues urgently as local weather impacts speed up globally. If solastalgia acts as a pathway between environmental degradation and psychological sickness, then figuring out and addressing it might turn out to be essential for stopping climate-induced psychological well being issues. Nonetheless, as we will see, the proof base stays remarkably small, and vital questions in regards to the cultural validity and international applicability stay unanswered.
As local weather change transforms acquainted environments, individuals are grieving the lack of residence itself; a misery now recognised as ‘solastalgia’.
Strategies
The authors carried out a scientific scoping evaluate in accordance with PRISMA pointers, with pre-registration on the Open Science Framework. They searched PsycINFO and MEDLINE databases from 2003 (when Albrecht launched the idea) by means of September 2024 utilizing the key phrase “solastalgia.” Two investigators independently screened titles, abstracts, and full-texts.
For his or her preliminary “core search,” research had been included provided that they quantitatively measured solastalgia utilizing validated scales, employed validated psychological well being measures, and reported relationships between solastalgia and psychological well being outcomes. The authors extracted knowledge on correlations and different statistical relationships between solastalgia and despair, nervousness, post-traumatic stress dysfunction, and different psychological well being issues.
Recognising the restricted literature recognized by means of strict standards, the authors carried out a second “prolonged search” that included research mentioning solastalgia and psychological well being with out requiring quantitative solastalgia measurement. This expanded scope integrated each qualitative and quantitative research, utilising non-validated measures, to supply a broader contextual understanding of how solastalgia pertains to psychological well-being throughout various populations and settings. The authors didn’t conduct threat of bias assessments, per scoping evaluate methodology.
Outcomes
The preliminary database search recognized 80 research containing the time period “solastalgia.” After screening, solely 5 quantitative research met the core eligibility standards, with a further 14 research included within the prolonged search (six quantitative and eight qualitative). The 19 included research collectively examined various populations affected by environmental adjustments, together with bushfires, droughts, floods, open-pit mining, oil manufacturing, and common local weather impacts.
Melancholy and Solastalgia
Three core research examined relationships between solastalgia and despair amongst folks experiencing pure disasters, bushfires, and dwelling close to open-pit mines in Germany, Australia, and the US. All three discovered statistically vital optimistic correlations. Research inspecting acute catastrophe experiences reported smaller correlations, starting from 0.27 to 0.29, whereas the German research of communities close to steady mining operations discovered stronger correlations, starting from 0.35 to 0.53. The prolonged search recognized six extra research supporting optimistic associations between solastalgia and despair. Nonetheless, one quantitative research discovered marginally greater despair charges in areas unaffected by environmental degradation (though this comparability was not adjusted for demographic variations). Qualitative research supplied vivid illustrations, with contributors describing despair rising when “every part that you already know is taken away from you” and feeling “very helpless” when unable to manage environmental adjustments affecting their lives.
Anxiousness and Solastalgia
The identical three core research examined nervousness, discovering vital optimistic correlations starting from 0.21 to 0.51. Once more, the strongest associations appeared in contexts of ongoing environmental degradation, fairly than single acute occasions. 5 prolonged search research supported these findings, with qualitative proof describing communities experiencing “eco-anxiety of an unknown future” and dwelling “day after day with the looming menace of the subsequent large occasion.”
PTSD and Solastalgia
Two core research examined post-traumatic stress dysfunction, each discovering correlations of roughly 0.29 between solastalgia and PTSD signs. One research centered on drought and forest hearth experiences in Chile, while the opposite examined people who had skilled varied pure disasters.
Different Psychological Well being Outcomes
Three core research examined extra outcomes, together with psychological misery, somatisation, and psychological well-being. Researchers discovered that every one-point improve on a solastalgia scale elevated the percentages of psychological misery by 26%. Correlations between solastalgia and somatisation ranged from 0.42 to 0.54. Solastalgia confirmed a adverse correlation with the psychological well-being of minus 0.28. Prolonged search research moreover discovered solastalgia related to pessimistic outlook, adverse have an effect on, decrease self-worth and shallowness, and lowered resilience.
Geographical and Cultural Contexts
Research had been carried out in Australia (together with Aboriginal communities and the Torres Strait Islands), Canada (together with Inuit populations), Germany, Ghana, India, Eire, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Chile, and the US. A number of research have emphasised Indigenous views, providing helpful insights into how environmental change impacts communities with deep ancestral connections to their land. Qualitative research persistently described solastalgia as a helpful idea for understanding emotional responses to environmental change, with researchers noting:
regardless of their limitations, the present findings for essentially the most half agree with prior analysis suggesting that the presence of [environmental degradation] will increase community-wide threat for misery and dysfunction, which in flip helps the assemble of solastalgia.
Throughout the restricted proof base, solastalgia was linked with greater ranges of despair, nervousness, PTSD, and common psychological misery.
Conclusions
The authors concluded that solastalgia exhibits constant optimistic correlations with psychological well being issues, together with despair, nervousness, and PTSD, throughout the restricted quantitative proof base. They famous that solastalgia seems extra intense or salient in situations of ongoing environmental destruction in comparison with one-time occasions, and in clearly human-made situations, akin to mining operations, in comparison with pure disasters probably attributable to climate fairly than local weather change.
The qualitative proof recommended that solastalgia supplies a helpful language for understanding how environmental adjustments have an effect on emotional well-being, notably amongst communities with robust place-based identities and cultural connections to the land. The authors proposed that solastalgia may act as a mediating issue between environmental change and psychological well being issues, hypothesising that it might function an early warning signal for climate-related psychological misery. They emphasised the necessity for extra quantitative analysis, notably longitudinal research that might set up temporal relationships and approximate causality, to tell the event of preventive interventions focusing on solastalgia and thereby mitigating climate-induced psychological well being issues.
Solastalgia could also be an early marker of climate-related psychological well being difficulties, highlighting the necessity to deal with each environmental loss and its psychological fallout.
Strengths and limitations
This evaluate exhibits methodological transparency by means of pre-registration, adherence to PRISMA pointers, and unbiased twin screening and knowledge extraction. The choice to conduct each a strict core search and a broader prolonged search is a practical recognition of this discipline’s emergent nature while sustaining scientific requirements. The inclusion of qualitative research enriches understanding past what correlation coefficients alone can convey, offering important context in regards to the lived experiences of environmental misery.
Nonetheless, there are additionally vital limitations to think about. The quantitative proof base stays strikingly small, with solely 5 research assembly preliminary eligibility standards. That is exceptional on condition that the idea was launched over twenty years in the past, and validated measurement scales have existed since 2006. All recognized quantitative research employed cross-sectional designs, limiting causal inference, and we can’t decide whether or not solastalgia precedes psychological well being issues, whether or not psychological well being issues improve vulnerability to experiencing solastalgia, or whether or not third elements affect each concurrently.
The geographical distribution displays a considerable bias in direction of high-income international locations, with research predominantly originating from Australia, Germany, and the US. This issues profoundly from a worldwide psychological well being perspective, as low- and middle-income international locations disproportionately expertise extreme local weather impacts but stay severely underrepresented on this proof synthesis. The slender search technique, while defensible given solastalgia’s standing as a definite time period with out synonyms, could have excluded related analysis inspecting related phenomena underneath completely different conceptual frameworks. For instance, in Latin America, misery can also be conceptualised by means of frameworks linking human wellbeing to Pachamama (Mom Earth), which could not seem in searches restricted to the English time period “solastalgia.”
Additionally, the evaluate inadequately examines whether or not solastalgia, as at present conceptualised and measured by means of Western-developed scales, successfully captures the experiences of worldwide communities. Cultural validity issues deserve deeper consideration given international psychological well being analysis’s ongoing reckoning with epistemic injustices perpetuated by means of uncritical software of Western psychiatric classes to non-Western contexts. The noticed correlations between solastalgia and despair (as much as 0.53) and nervousness (as much as 0.51) increase questions on discriminant validity. The evaluate would profit from a extra rigorous examination of whether or not solastalgia scales reveal ample discriminant validity, much like the cautious consideration paid to the event of the Local weather Change Anxiousness Scale, which confirmed a transparent distinction from generalised nervousness dysfunction.
The evaluate mentions that solastalgia represents one among a number of “eco-emotions” together with eco-anxiety, eco-grief, and eco-shame, but supplies inadequate examination of how these constructs interrelate empirically or whether or not they signify meaningfully completely different experiences. The proliferation of partially overlapping constructs with out cautious consideration to conceptual boundaries dangers creating taxonomic confusion that hinders each analysis development and medical software.
Lastly, there’s a restricted evaluation of structural elements driving each environmental degradation and differential psychological well being impacts. Communities dwelling close to open-pit mines or oil manufacturing websites are usually not merely “uncovered” populations to environmental change however fairly communities experiencing systematic environmental injustice. The proof would profit from being located inside frameworks that acknowledge energy dynamics, colonialism, and structural inequities shaping each environmental and psychological well being outcomes.
Whereas the evaluate supplies preliminary proof, it reveals main gaps in international illustration and conceptual readability about what solastalgia really measures.
Implications for observe
This evaluate raises vital questions on how psychological well being professionals, policymakers, and researchers ought to reply to rising proof linking environmental change with psychological misery by means of mechanisms like solastalgia.
Essential warning is warranted in opposition to uncritically medicalising emotional responses to ecological destruction. Solastalgia could signify a completely rational response to environmental loss, fairly than psychopathology requiring remedy. Therapeutic approaches should keep away from implying that issues lie inside distressed people fairly than in ecological destruction itself. As Doherty and colleagues (2011) have argued of their work on therapeutic responses to local weather change, psychological help for local weather misery stays important. Nonetheless, it should be acknowledged that structural adjustments to deal with environmental degradation signify essentially the most direct answer.
Typical remedies for grief, despair, or nervousness assume entry to psychological well being companies that stay severely restricted in lots of contexts experiencing essentially the most extreme local weather impacts. Analysis demonstrates that over seventy-five per cent of individuals with psychological well being situations in low- and middle-income international locations obtain no medical remedy, as fundamental psychological well being infrastructure stays absent. Different intervention frameworks deserve larger consideration and help, together with community-based approaches grounded in native cultural practices and interventions that help community-led environmental restoration efforts, which can concurrently deal with each ecological degradation and related psychological misery.
This evaluate highlights pressing wants for longitudinal and quasi-experimental designs that may set up temporal relationships. Moreover, future research should prioritise geographical range and develop culturally acceptable measurement approaches collaboratively with affected communities and explicitly look at whether or not solastalgia represents a common human expertise or a culturally particular approach of understanding environmental misery. Measurement growth requires explicit consideration to discriminant validity, fastidiously establishing whether or not solastalgia scales seize phenomena distinct from different psychological situations. Coverage responses should deal with each the psychological well being penalties of environmental change and the environmental adjustments themselves. As Hayes and colleagues (2018) have argued of their work, efficient coverage requires simultaneous consideration to local weather mitigation, adaptation infrastructure, psychological well being system strengthening, and addressing underlying social determinants.
The environmental justice dimensions demand express acknowledgement. Communities experiencing essentially the most extreme solastalgia usually face systematic marginalisation, with environmental degradation concentrated amongst populations already experiencing well being inequities. Coverage and observe responses should recognise that solastalgia emerges from structural inequities that decide which communities’ environments are degraded and that are protected. This is likely one of the many issues we should deal with to realize a fairer world.
Supporting folks affected by solastalgia means treating emotional ache and tackling the environmental injustices that trigger it.
Assertion of pursuits
None declared.
Hyperlinks
Main Paper
Vela Sandquist A, Biele L, Ehlert U, Fischer S. (2025) Is solastalgia related to psychological well being issues? A scoping evaluate. BMJ Psychological Well being 2025;28:1-6. doi:10.1136/bmjment-2025-301639
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