Almost one million Canadians have serious climate anxiety, study suggests – CBC

Can affect sleep, concentration and normal daily functioning

Oct 21, 2025

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has spoken about how at age 11, she was so depressed about climate change she stopped talking and eating and lost 10 kilograms in two months.

Here in Canada, a mother of two children in Salmon Arm, B.C., says her anxiety about the climate her kids will experience “becomes so heavy it’s suffocating.” A Calgary student says she started obsessing about food to cope with her anxiety about the state of our planet, and sometimes was “so overwhelmed with what food choices were best for the planet, I hardly ate at all.”

But how common is this kind of anxiety in Canada? A new study estimates climate anxiety is so severe that it disrupts sleep and everyday functioning for nearly a million Canadians.

The study, published Tuesday in Nature Mental Health, randomly surveyed more than 2,400 Canadians aged 13 or older and categorized them using a climate change anxiety scale developed in the U.S. It asks the extent to which people agree with statements such as “Thinking about climate change makes it difficult for me to sleep” or “I find myself crying because of climate change.”

Almost one million Canadians have serious climate anxiety, study suggests – CBC

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