All you need to know about solastalgia: The psychological toll of a changing climate

Following our special Earth Day episode of Iyashi Conversations last week, we are continuing our deep dive into the intersection of global ecological crises and our mental health.

In Episode 2 with Tabitha Nekesa, we explored the weight of eco-anxiety on our agricultural communities. We discussed the reality that when a drought hits or floods wash away a harvest, it is not just crops that are lost, it is trauma accompanying it.

So today, I am writing an article to put a clinical name to that invisible trauma: Solastalgia.

Are you feeling a deep sense of grief about the changing weather patterns? Have you perhaps seen it among communities devastated by climate shocks?

Understanding this concept is the first step toward healing.

What is Solastalgia?

The term "solastalgia" is a portmanteau of the words ‘solace’ and ‘nostalgia’. The concept was first introduced by environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht in 2003 to describe the unique distress caused by environmental changes in one’s home or surroundings (Sandquist et al., 2025).

It is basically the feeling of homesickness when you have not left home but your home (your environment, your farm, your ancestral land) has changed so much due to ecological crises that it no longer provides the comfort, solace, and identity you once knew. As humans, we are connected to the environment around us. The environment provides stability and security; and losing this connection can lead to great distress and sadness (Sandquist et al., 2025).

At Iyashi Wellness Centre, we emphasize that our well being, our mental health is at the heart of everything. That our menta health is affected by and influenced by our physical realities. As such, solastalgia is not just a fleeting feeling of worry; it is a measurable psychological burden.

A 2025 scoping review examining the psychological mechanisms of environmental change found that solastalgia is significantly associated with mental health problems. The review found consistent, positive correlations between solastalgia and depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Sandquist et al., 2025). Furthermore, it was linked to somatization (physical symptoms of psychological distress), pessimism, and a reduced sense of resilience.

Why does changing weather cause such severe clinical symptoms? One possible explanation is the psychological concept of learned helplessness. This theory suggests that depressive symptoms stem from a perceived loss of control (Sandquist et al., 2025). When farmers watch the rains fail year after year—an event entirely beyond their control—it breeds a sense of powerlessness and resignation that impacts their mental health.

As we discussed on the podcast, solastagia is not an abstract western concept. Research shows that solastalgia is tied to the loss of ancestral lands and the disruption of land-based livelihoods, which explains why groups like farmers and pastoralists are particularly affected by it (Sandquist et al., 2025).

In Kenya, where agricultural livelihoods and pastoralist traditions are tied to the predictability of the land, climate shocks are a direct threat to psychological safety. The deterioration of the land impacts mental health due to both a loss of place-based solace and the loss of livelihoods leading to negative economic implications (Sandquist et al., 2025). This is why we are seeing increased cases of burnout, depression, and trauma in regions heavily affected by climate shocks.

Healing in a Changing World

The first step in treating any psychological pain is validating it. If you are experiencing distress over the degradation of your environment, your feelings are a normal response to climate crisis. Healing from solastalgia requires us to move beyond just acknowledging the grief; to actively constructing new psychological frameworks. In clinical practice, we approach this pain through the lens of ambiguous loss. Unlike a traditional loss with a definitive ending, environmental degradation is chronic and it is ongoing. The drought persists, and the familiar landscape continues to shift. To process this, we create safe spaces for mourning. Remember that we cannot heal in isolation especially when trauma related to solastagia is collective. Engaging in community dialogues, sharing the emotional toll of failed harvests, and recognizing that your individual anxiety is part of a broader grief can be therapeutic. It removes the isolation of learned helplessness and replaces it with shared validation.

In addition, healing requires us to redefine our relationship with action and control. When the macro-environment is chaotic, we are encouraged to strategically shrink our focus to the micro-environment. We call this process reclaiming agency. For agricultural communities and climate advocates, this might look like focusing on manageable conservation efforts or establishing community-based mental health support networks. Successfully executing small, tangible actions within your sphere of influence can help disrupt the loop of powerlessness. You prove to your nervous system that while you cannot control global climate patterns, you possess the ability to affect your immediate surroundings. This cognitive shift is one of the ways of building long-term psychological resilience against eco-anxiety. Ultimately, we must weave these new realities into our evolving cultural narratives.

If you have not already done so, I invite you to tune into episode two of the Iyashi Conversations Podcast. Tabitha Nekesa and I unpacked this trauma and discussed strategies for maintaining our mental health amidst ecological uncertainty through policy.

If you or your organizational team are struggling with the mental health impacts of environmental loss, climate anxiety, or burnout, our clinical team at Iyashi Wellness Centre is here for you. We provide empathetic, trauma-informed care designed to help you regain a sense of grounding, purpose, and resilience.

Click the link below to book a consultation with our experts today: https://www.iyashiwellness.org/corporate-wellness

References

Sandquist, A. V., Biele, L., Ehlert, U., & Fischer, S. (2025). Is solastalgia associated with mental health problems? A scoping review. BMJ Mental Health, 28(1).