There is growing evidence suggesting that how people think and feel is being influenced by the transformation of our ecosystem relating to climate change and industry-related displacement from the land. What is interesting is that these stressors are occurring more frequently around the world according to a research study conducted by the Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health at the University of Newcastle in Australia.
When they conducted interviews in drought-affected communities in New South Wales in 2005, the responses suggested some of their subjects may have been suffering from a psychological condition called solastalgia (pronounced so-la-stal-juh).
Solastalgia describes a sense of dislocation and loss that people feel when they perceive changes to their local environment as harmful. Glenn Albrecht, an environmental philosopher at the University of Newcastle’s School of Environmental and Life Sciences, coined this term in 2003.
Albrecht’s work among communities distraught by black-coal strip mining in New South Wales’ Upper Hunter Region convinced him that the English language needed a new term to connect the experience of ecosystem loss to mental health concerns, according to a recent article.
He reported, “the sense of a home landscape being violated [by strip mining-related environmental damage] seemed to have disturbed the region’s social ecology so much that the psychic or mental health of many people living in the zone of high impact was being affected.”
I’ll be continuing this discussion in my next blog post so we can totally understand this mental impact environmental conditions have on us and how it impacts our marketing.
Helping You Understand and Profit from Consumer Health and Green Trends
Colette Chandler
