Eco-Anxiety and Pandemic Distress Psychological Perspectives on Resilience and Interconnectedness

As environmental destruction becomes more extreme around the planet, the way humans experience the natural world is changing, giving rise to more frequent and intense experiences of eco-anxiety. Not simply personal or social, eco-anxiety is distributed across the relationships that humans have with the life, land, air, and water of Earth. This anthology presents international and interdisciplinary perspectives on eco-anxiety, with attention to two of the most prominent sources of eco-anxiety today: pandemics, specifically with regards to COVID-19, and the climate crisis. From the microscopic scale of viruses to the macroscopic scale of Earth's atmosphere, instability in natural systems is causing unprecedented forms of psychological distress, including anxiety and related emotional or affective states like grief, anger, guilt, and depression.

Eco-Anxiety and Pandemic Distress both builds upon and moves beyond the latest research in environmental psychology, conservation psychology, and clinical psychology. Dominant research paradigms in these areas rely primarily on experimental and observational methodologies that analyze quantitative data. In contrast, this book focuses on sophisticated traditions of social and cultural psychology in dialogue with other disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. The result is a nuanced understanding of the human experience of confronting eco-anxiety, offering critical insights into the subjective worlds of individuals as they grapple with the intertwined existential threats of the climate crisis and pandemics.

Douglas A. Vakoch is an American astrobiologist, search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) researcher, psychologist, and president of METI International, a nonprofit research and educational organization devoted to transmitting intentional signals to extraterrestrial civilizations. He has
edited over a dozen books in SETI, astrobiology, the psychology of space exploration, and ecocriticism. He is general editor of two book series in ecocriticism and in the intersection of space and society. Vakoch has appeared widely on television and radio as a commentator on SETI and astrobiology.
He is an emeritus professor of clinical psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS).

Sam Mickey is an adjunct professor in the Theology and Religious Studies department and the Environmental Studies program at the University of San Francisco. He is the Book Review Editor for the journal Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology, a Research Associate for the Yale Forum on
Religion and Ecology, and an author of several books exploring intersections of philosophy, religion, and ecology, including On the Verge of a Planetary Civilization: A Philosophy of Integral Ecology (2014), and Coexistentialism and the Unbearable Intimacy of Ecological Emergency (Lexington Books,
2016).