Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T00:32:47.624Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 7 - Understanding the Role of Trauma and Dissociation in Youth Responses to Climate Crises

Eco-Neglect as Institutional Child Abuse

from Part I - Conceptual Foundations of Climate Distress in Young People

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2024

By
Karen Hopenwasser
Edited by
Elizabeth Haase  and
Kelsey Hudson
Elizabeth Haase
Affiliation:
University of Nevada, Reno
Kelsey Hudson
Affiliation:
Climate Psychology Alliance North America
Get access

Summary

Humans have evolved as a species with unique capabilities to destroy this world that we inhabit. Some of this destructiveness is a function of a loss of embodied wisdom and a dissociative disconnection from the complex systems of life on the planet. Inaction about climate change is a failure to protect our children and can be considered institutional child abuse. Climate disasters, along with other social injustices, traumatize all life on the planet, and disproportionately impact those already struggling with loss of community support. Fostering posttraumatic wisdom in youth requires recognition that some are vulnerable to maladaptive psychic numbing, while others manifest a resilience born from imagination and creativity.

Keywords

knowing and not knowingtraumadissociationchild abuseACEsposttraumatic wisdomembodied awarenessclimate change
Type
Chapter
Information
Climate Change and Youth Mental Health
Multidisciplinary Perspectives
 , pp. 130 - 147
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, C. (2001). Heat and violence. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10(1), 33–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Auden, W. H. (1979). Musée des Beaux Arts. In Mendelson, E. (Ed.), Collected poems: W. H. Auden. Vintage Books, Random House.Google Scholar
Bowers, M. E., & Yehuda, R. (2016). Intergenerational transmission of stress in humans. Neuropsychopharmacology, 41(1), 232–244. doi:10.1038/npp.2015.247.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bradshaw, G. A., & Bekoff, M. (2001). Ecology and social responsibility: The re-embodiment of science. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 16, 460–465. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0169-5347(01)02204-2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burton, A. O., & Montauban, A. (2021). Toward community control of child welfare funding: Repeal the child abuse prevention and treatment act and delink child protection from family well-being. Columbia Journal of Race and Law, 11(3). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3905041CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Capra, F. (1997). The web of life: A new scientific understanding of living systems. Anchor.Google Scholar
Cianconi, P., Betrò, S., & Janiri, L. (2020). The impact of climate change on mental health: A systematic descriptive review. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 11. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00074.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clayton, S., Manning, C. M., Krygsman, K., & Speiser, M. (2017). Mental health and our changing climate: Impacts, implications, and guidance. American Psychological Association, and ecoAmerica.Google Scholar
Cook-Shonkoff, A. (2022). Inaction on climate is child abuse. San Francisco Chronicle, August 2.Google Scholar
Damasio, A. (1999). The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of Consciousness. Harcourt.Google Scholar
De Bellis, M. D., & Zisk, A. (2014). The biological effects of childhood trauma. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 23(2), 185–222.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Doherty, T. J., & Clayton, S. (2011). The psychological impacts of global climate change. American Psychologist, May–June, 66(4), 265–276. doi: 10.1037/a0023141CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
El Sherief, M., Saha, K., Gupta, P., Mishra, S., Seybolt, J., Xie, J., … De Choudhury, M. (2021). Impacts of school shooter drills on the psychological well-being of American K-12 school communities: A social media study. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 8, 315. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00993-6Google Scholar
Frewen, P. A., & Lanius, R. A. (2006). Neurobiology of dissociation: Unity and disunity in mind-body-brain. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 29(1), 113–128. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psc.2005.10.016CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Freyd, J. J. (1997). Violations of power, adaptive blindness and betrayal trauma theory. Feminism & Psychology, 7(1), 22–32. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353597071004CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freyd, J. J. (2003). What is DARVO? http://dynamic.uoregon.edu/~jjf/defineDARVO.html.Google Scholar
Gendlin, E. T. (1982). Focusing. Bantam.Google Scholar
Hickman, C., Marks, E., Pihkala, P., Clayton, S., Leandowski, R. E., Mayal, E. E., … van Susteren, L. (2021). Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: A global survey. The Lancet Planetary Health, 5(12). https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(21)00278-3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, A. E., & Wilkinson, K. K. (2020). All we can save: Truth, courage, and solutions for the climate crisis. One World.Google Scholar
Jones, C. M., Merrick, M. T., & Houry, D. E. (2020). Identifying and preventing adverse childhood experiences. JAMA, 232(1), 25–26. doi: 10.1001/jama.2019.18499CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kemp, C. H., Silverman, F. M., Steele, B. F., Droegemueller, W., & Silver, H. K.(1984). The Battered Child Syndrome. JAMA, 251(24), 3288–3294. doi:10.1001/jama.1984.03340480070033CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krakauer, D. (2019). Worlds in plain sight. SFI Press. https://santafe.edu/what-is-complex-systems-scienceGoogle Scholar
Laub, D., & Auerhahn, N. (1993). Knowing and not knowing massive psychic trauma: Forms of traumatic memory. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 74, 287–302.Google Scholar
Lebois, L. A. M., Li, M., Baker, J. T., Wolff, J. D., Wang, D., Lambros, A. M., … Kaufman, M. L. (2021). Large-scale functional brain network architecture changes associated with trauma-related dissociation. American Journal of Psychiatry, 178(2), 165–173. doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.2020.19060647.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levine, P. (1997). Waking the tiger. North Atlantic Books.Google Scholar
Lifton, R. J. (1993). The protean self: Human resilience in an age of fragmentation. Basic Books.Google Scholar
Machado, A. (2003). There is no road (trans. D. Malone & M. Berg). White Pine Press (original work published 1912).Google Scholar
Markel, H. (2009). Case shined first light on abuse of children. New York Times, December 13.Google Scholar
Marshall, G. (2014). Don’t even think about it: Why our brains are wired to ignore climate change. Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Mason, M. A. (1996). From father’s property to children’s rights: The history of child custody in the United States. Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
McKay, A. [Director]. (2021). Don’t Look Up [Film]. Hyperobject Industries and Bluegrass Films.Google Scholar
Menakem, R. (2017). My grandmother’s hands. Central Recovery Press.Google Scholar
Meyers, J. (2008). A short history of child protection in America. Family Law Quarterly, 42(3), 449–463.Google Scholar
National Scientific Council on the Developing Child (2005/2014). Excessive stress disrupts the architecture of the brain developing brain. Working paper 3. Updated edition. www.developingchild.harvard.eduGoogle Scholar
New England Complex Systems Institute. https://necsi.eduGoogle Scholar
Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the body. Norton Professional Books.Google Scholar
Perry, B. D. (2001). The neurodevelopmental impact of violence in childhood. In Schetky, D. & Benedek, E. P. (Eds.), Textbook of child and adolescent forensic psychiatry (pp. 221–238). American Psychiatric Press.Google Scholar
Perry, B. D. & Pollard, R. (1998). Homeostasis, stress, trauma and adaptation: A neurodevelopmental view of childhood trauma. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 7(1), 33–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. Norton.Google Scholar
Putnam, F. (1997). Dissociation in children and adolescents: A developmental approach. Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Reem, A. (2022). Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences; Violence against women and girls in the context of the climate crisis, including environmental degradation and related disaster risk mitigation and response, Seventy-seventh General Assembly of the United Nations.Google Scholar
Roberts, D. (2022). Torn apart. Basic Books.Google Scholar
Sapiains, R., Beeton, R. J. S., & Walker, I. A. (2015). The dissociative experience: Mediating the tension between people’s awareness of environmental problems and their inadequate behavioral responses. Ecopsychology, 7(1), 38–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schonfeld, D. J., Melzer-Lange, M., Hashikawa, A. N., & Gorski, P. A. (2020). Participation of children and adolescents in live crisis drills and exercises. Pediatrics, 146(3), e2020015503.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schore, A. (2013). Relational trauma, brain development, and dissociation. In Ford, J. & Courtois, C. (Eds.), Treating complex traumatic stress disorders in adolescents and children. Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Sharma, A. (2022). Dear politicians young climate activists are not abuse victims we are children who read news. The Guardian, April 27.Google Scholar
Snyder, G. (1995). Earth day and the war against the imagination. In Snyder, G. A., Place in space (pp. 56–64). Counterpoint.Google Scholar
Solnit, R. (2018). Climate change is violence. In Solnit, R., Call them by their true names: American crises (and essays) (pp. 83–87). Haymarket Books.Google Scholar
Stanberry, L. R., Thomson, M. C., & James, W., (2018). Prioritizing the needs of children in a changing climate. PLoS Med, 15(7): e1002627.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Teicher, M. H., & Samson, J. A. (2016). Annual research review: Enduring neurobiological effects of childhood abuse and neglect. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 57(3), 241–266.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thomas, M. P., (1972). Child abuse and neglect part I – Historical overview, legal matrix, and social perspectives. North Carolina Law Review, 50, 293.Google Scholar
UNICEF (2021). The climate crisis is a child rights crisis: Introducing the children’s climate risk index. United Nations Children’s Fund.Google Scholar
Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score. Viking Press.Google Scholar
Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1993). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Walker, B. (2020). Resilience: What it is and is not. Ecology and Society, 25(2), 11. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11647-250211CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weintrobe, S. (2021). Psychological roots of climate consciousness: Neoliberal exceptionalism and the culture of uncare. Bloomsbury Academic.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whyte, K. P. Brewer, J. P., & Johnson, J. T. (2015). Weaving Indigenous science, protocols and sustainability science. Sustainability Science, published online. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11625-015-0296-6Google Scholar
Worthy, K. (2008). Modern institutions, phenomenal dissociations, and destructiveness toward humans and the environment. Organization & Environment, 21(2), 148–170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wray, B. (2022). Generation dread: Finding purpose in an age of climate crisis. Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Yehuda, R., Daskalakis, N. P., Lehrner, A., Desarnaud, F., Bader, H. N., Makotkine, I., … Meaney, M. J. (2014). Influences of maternal and paternal PTSD on epigenetic regulation of the glucocorticoid receptor gene in Holocaust survivor offspring. American Journal of Psychiatry, 171, 872–880.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×