{"id":7957,"date":"2026-08-20T10:00:03","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T10:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/portal\/2026\/08\/20\/support-networks-aim-to-help-kids-through-the-polycrisis\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T10:00:03","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T10:00:03","slug":"support-networks-aim-to-help-kids-through-the-polycrisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/portal\/2026\/08\/20\/support-networks-aim-to-help-kids-through-the-polycrisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Support networks aim to help kids through the polycrisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometime in the late 2000s, Pim Sullivan-Tailyour was sitting in the back of a car, headed toward her great-grandmother\u2019s tiny town in the south of Thailand. She watched big mountains pass by out the window. She was just six years old but was about to be hit by an adult-size realization. \u201cThey were just quarried out,\u201d she says. \u201cLike half the mountain just dug out and disappeared, and so there was just this huge orange face.\u201d <\/p>\n

Although she probably didn\u2019t know the word \u201cquarry\u201d back then, she sensed that what she was seeing was unnatural. She also knew, from family stories, that her mother had bathed in a nearby river when she was young, its water so glass-clear she could see fish swimming by. But the extraction had muddied the water. \u201cWe\u2019re changing things,\u201d Sullivan-Tailyour thought. \u201cAnd it doesn\u2019t seem right.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the first time it occurred to her that humans could alter the world\u2014and that they were. For the worse. <\/p>\n

She carried that knowledge with her as she got older and her family moved to the UK. There, she joined teenagers from other schools in the Schools Sustainability Network, an umbrella organization for groups that work on environmental initiatives. <\/p>\n

But even with those connections, Sullivan-Tailyour didn\u2019t encounter anyone at her own school who was interested in environmental activism. She felt lonely in her desire to push for change\u2014and burnt out on working solo. \u201cI was pretty much the only person who wanted to do these things,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

That was when she heard about another initiative, called Force of Nature. A UK-based organization, in 2021 it had spun up Becoming a Force of Nature, a kind of informal online group therapy program, for kids and young adults worried about climate. The sessions aimed to help young people like Sullivan-Tailyour take their worries and turn them into action, stemming the exact kind of anxiety and burnout she was feeling.<\/p>\n

She signed up and soon logged into Zoom for her first session. Dozens of faces from dozens of countries looked back at her. \u201cI realized that I wasn\u2019t alone,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

She began to suspect that kids at her school actually did feel the way she did, even if they weren\u2019t doing anything about it. <\/p>\n

Sullivan-Tailyour was right, it turns out: Global surveys have found that most<\/em> kids are anxious about the state of the world\u2014and not just about whether sea levels and carbon counts will continue to rise. They are growing up in a time of what some historians, policymakers, and economists are calling a \u201cpolycrisis\u201d: The planet is warming, yes, but also a pandemic happened and could happen again, conflicts keep erupting, nuclear weapons lurk menacingly in silos, housing is growing impossibly expensive, groceries and gas can feel like luxury purchases, health-care costs are skyrocketing, authoritarianism is on the rise, partisanship splits populations, jobs are hard to get and there\u2019s rampant worry AI will take more and more of them, and pings about all those things (and more!) arrive 24-7 in polarizing digital echo chambers. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s a lot. And it\u2019s why online networks like Force of Nature have popped up. Although they\u2019re not taking over the planet, they have gained thousands of participants. And they\u2019re now dealing with climate not as an isolated issue but as one facet of a generally troubled world. The goal is to help young people, who are experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety at higher rates than earlier generations, deal with their feelings about the multivariately changing future they are maturing into. <\/p>\n

But the science on the effectiveness of these sorts of networks is still nascent, and psychological scholars\u2014and some practitioners\u2014say it\u2019s time for the field to measure itself. That way, schools, parents, and kids themselves can know which programs to invest their time and resources in to actually help young people feel better. <\/p>\n

Tough times<\/h3>\n

The existential dread that comes with the climate crisis is so pervasive that it\u2019s had an official name for many years: eco-anxiety. \u201cThe American Psychological Association calls it a \u2018chronic fear of environmental doom,\u2019\u201d says Liza Jachens, a psychologist and assistant professor at the University of Nottingham\u2019s school of medicine. \u201cWhat people describe is closer to grief. A real sense of loss\u2014not just fear of what is coming but mourning for what has already gone.\u201d <\/p>\n

Lise Van Susteren, a psychiatrist and coauthor of \u201cThe Psychological Effects of Global Warming on the United States,\u201d a 2012 report for the National Wildlife Federation, has called it \u201cpre-traumatic\u201d stress; she sees it as a kind of anticipatory trauma.<\/p>\n

\n

In a 2021 study measuring climate anxiety, 56% of 10,000 children and young people in 10 countries agreed with the statement \u201cHumanity is doomed.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But there isn\u2019t really a word to describe feelings people have about <waves hands> the rest of what\u2019s going on in the world. A 2025 study<\/a> from Polish researchers attempted to define \u201cpolycrisis syndrome\u201d in the young people bubbling into adulthood in this hot soup of ingredients. The researchers assessed their reactions to the many crises using established scales of emotional and mental symptoms\u2014things like the \u201cFlourishing Index\u201d and the \u201cDifficulties in Emotional Regulation Scale.\u201d \u201cMost young individuals in our study face psychological challenges,\u201d the authors write. In fact, more than 60% reported problems \u2014difficulty regulating emotion, symptoms of depression, and lower overall mental and physical well-being\u2014that they attributed to the cumulative stress of world affairs.<\/p>\n

That finding meshes with earlier, more climate-specific research suggesting that the kids are (sorry) not all right. In 2021, researchers published a landmark study in The Lancet Planetary Health <\/em>measuring climate anxiety in 10,000 children and young people in 10 countries. Around 60% reported being very or extremely worried about climate change, with more than 45% saying that eco-anxiety affected their daily ability to function. The word \u201cpolycrisis\u201d wasn\u2019t in as wide use then, but 56% of the young respondents nevertheless agreed with the statement \u201cHumanity is doomed.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Gen Z isn\u2019t the first to worry about the fate of the species. There isn\u2019t a readily available baseline in the academic literature to compare current youth angst against, but previous studies can give some context. In the early 1980s, during the latter years of the Cold War, around 35%<\/a> of high school seniors agreed with the statement \u201cNuclear or biological annihilation will probably be the fate of all mankind within my lifetime,\u201d according to a survey of 130 schools in 48 states. Around the same time, a Gallup poll found that 49% of teens said the possibility of nuclear war influenced how they planned for the future.<\/p>\n

Those young Baby Boomers and elder Gen Xers were, though, perhaps more optimistic than kids today as a whole. A majority of students from the high school study agreed with the statement \u201cThe human race has come through tough times before and will do so again.\u201d <\/p>\n

A 1986 analysis of such research, published by the National Academy of Sciences, described how to help kids feel less alone with their fears: \u201cWhat is necessary for those providing the education is knowledge of the issue, sensitivity to the inner processes of working through the painful feelings engendered, and a willingness to try to come to grips with what the youngsters are voicing.\u201d<\/p>\n

That connection between adults and kids, psychological scholars are currently finding, is still key four decades later. Caroline Hickman, the psychotherapist who led the Lancet Planetary Health<\/em> study, says the most striking finding was that kids weren\u2019t just anxious about the state of the planet; they were upset that older people had failed to protect their future. \u201cWhatever your politics, we have this expectation that faith leaders, school leaders, community leaders, government officials, will look after us and have our best interests at heart,\u201d Hickman says, \u201cand that social contract was being broken repeatedly.\u201d Grief and anxiety are rational responses, she tells clients, to that bad situation.<\/p>\n

Finding connection<\/h3>\n

Sullivan-Tailyour received that message from the very beginning at Becoming a Force of Nature. At the first session, facilitators (themselves young people) asked how participants felt about the future broadly and the climate crisis specifically. <\/p>\n

That question hit Sullivan-Tailyour hard. She was used to thinking of numbers, news\u2014not her internal experience. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the things that we just don\u2019t give ourselves the chance to really think about,\u201d she says. The facilitators took the responses in and talked to participants, assuring them that eco-anxiety is only natural. \u201cOur planet is sick, so it\u2019s normal to feel sick alongside it, because we\u2019re just so interconnected,\u201d Sullivan-Tailyour says.<\/p>\n

In the second session, participants investigated their personal strengths, skills, and passions. And the final session synthesized the first two. \u201cWe create a road map for how they can go out into their communities and take action,\u201d says Hannah Hooper, until recently the group\u2019s head of programs.<\/p>\n

\n
\"""\"
Force of Nature\u2019s founder, Clover Hogan, was a teenager when she started the group in 2019.<\/figcaption>
COURTESY OF FORCE OF NATURE<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Reframing her feelings around action worked for Sullivan-Tailyour, as did the facilitators\u2019 realistic approach to doing so. They emphasized that it\u2019s unreasonable to put pressure on yourself to behave 24-7-365 in ways that will not harm the planet. <\/p>\n

Conveying that sentiment is important to Force of Nature\u2019s founder, Clover Hogan, who was a teenager when she started the group in 2019, just before the pandemic made everything virtual. One of her catchphrases is \u201cWe don\u2019t need 100 perfect activists but millions of imperfect ones.\u201d <\/p>\n

The informal group sessions for Becoming a Force of Nature, free on Zoom, are the initiative\u2019s main offering. The group has also built an interactive site called Hold This Space<\/a>, which leads individuals through similar mental pathways. And it\u2019s created a podcast that includes digitally solicited #climateconfessions: \u201cI\u2019ve stopped going to protests.\u201d \u201cI drive everywhere.\u201d \u201cI just can\u2019t be arsed to separate or put out the recycling.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group has also moved away from its strict eco-focus. \u201cWe still think it\u2019s really important, but it\u2019s not our bread and butter at Force of Nature anymore,\u201d Hooper says. Now it\u2019s beginning to use less climate-specific language in its outreach and encouraging people who come to its events to talk about other sources of anxiety or existential despair\u2014cost of living, conflict, whatever. <\/p>\n

They made the shift, Hooper says, for two reasons. For one, young people in privileged countries may be anxious, but others are in survival mode\u2014responding to acute crises, not just philosophical ones. For another, talking exclusively about climate grabs only a certain kind of person, and Force of Nature doesn\u2019t want to exist in an echo chamber\u2014especially when its leaders recognize that there\u2019s plenty else to worry about.<\/p>\n

Bad news graffiti wall <\/h3>\n

Force of Nature had around 900 participants in Becoming a Force of Nature last year and has about 2,000 students from more than 50 countries in its online community. It may be the most prominent receptacle for young people\u2019s planetary feelings, but it has company. Another group, called the Good Grief Network (GGN), recently spun off a program for teens. Its facilitators are trained online, but the youth programs typically take place in person.<\/p>\n

GGN, a Michigan-based nonprofit, has a 10-step program for adults, modeled after the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step model, to help people deal with their worldly anxieties. <\/p>\n

Susan Igras, a program designer and evaluator, took part in the adult GGN program and found it helpful. She wanted to adapt it for kids. \u201cSo we designed something that was much more experiential\u2014action-, reflection-based,\u201d she says. Igras and a collaborator cut the number of steps down to five, built the program around interactive activities, and called it GGN-Z. <\/p>\n

Igras and a collaborator began testing it in 2022 with kids in Northern California. The program is still small, but she\u2019s hopeful it can match the success of the adult version, which has been run more than 85 times with around 2,500 total participants. The group is beginning online training so that club leaders and teachers around the world can use the strategies in their home regions.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s early days, but some of GGN-Z\u2019s activities are already resonating. One perpetual favorite is the \u201cbad news graffiti wall,\u201d in which kids scrawl the things causing them angst onto a big sheet of paper. (On one recent wall, kids drew \u201cMeta=cringe,\u201d \u201chate speech,\u201d a tornado, \u201cLA\u201d with a fire above it, and a dollar sign with an up arrow.) As a group, they then talk about the feelings those bad things bring up.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Young
Some of GGN-Z\u2019s activities are already resonating, including the \u201cbad news graffiti wall,\u201d in which participants scrawl out the things causing them angst.<\/figcaption>
COURTESY OF GOOD GRIEF NETWORK<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Kids also tend to like GGN-Z\u2019s storytelling activity. \u201cLike a \u2018Once upon a time, I became aware of climate change,\u2019\u201d Igras says. It asks kids to reach back into their memories, to their first awareness that humans had altered the planet. One recent participant wrote, \u201cScared, 2nd grade learning about non-renewable resources.\u201d Another wrote of seeing a picture of a skinny polar bear on a small chunk of ice.<\/p>\n

Participants then switch to the positive, drawing their support web\u2014a map of everyone who cares about them and the places and people that make them feel supported. That positivity leads them into thinking about what they can do and who can help them.<\/p>\n

Does it all work? GGN-Z is currently in the process of evaluating itself\u2014something Igras thinks is not done often enough for interventions in this area. \u201cWhere\u2019s the program research? Because everyone is talking about feelings, but how do you know what works?\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to build the evidence.\u201d She and her colleagues are conducting surveys to see whether participants report improved well-being and have more skills to manage emotions. <\/p>\n

Force of Nature is also trying to quantify its impact, and to that end it has joined a 25-organization project called Youth Mental Wellbeing. For five years, they\u2019ll study the collective work of these organizations. \u201cThe goal of the project is basically just to spotlight what\u2019s working, to really show proven methods of working with young people and supporting them on their mental-health journeys,\u201d says Hooper.<\/p>\n

The idea of taking a scientific look at these kinds of interventions is just beginning to bloom. But if the people running the programs actually want to help kids, it\u2019s important to find out which methods work\u2014and avoid spending a lot of time on things that will leave them feeling the same or worse. <\/p>\n

Coping with the situation<\/h3>\n

Most existing research on effectiveness, though, simply shows that such research is new. Jachens, for instance, coauthored a 2021 scoping review of eco-anxiety programs for people of any age, to understand the nature and extent of existing research. She found 34 in existence. Of those, only two had done any formal evaluation on themselves. \u201cWe need to know what works for who, when, and where,\u201d Jachens says. In fact, she pleads with developers: \u201cPlease evaluate what you build.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another scoping review from 2024, led by Siqi Xue of the University of Toronto, found that the research gap hadn\u2019t closed. The team included the Good Grief Network in its analysis, noting that while GGN said 90% of participants in its programs felt more empowered and less alone, it didn\u2019t publish any data or methods backing up that finding. <\/p>\n

Still, these analyses do have bright spots. They suggest that the group approach provides connection and validation\u2014as well as an active direction for youths\u2019 troubled feelings. \u201cWhen people feel genuinely heard and held in their distress, they tend to move quite naturally toward wanting to do something,\u201d says Jachens.<\/p>\n

Few studies have looked at programs tailored to kids and young adults. But an analysis of one program in Sweden, called the Climate Emotion School, has at least added early dots of color to the map. Its curriculum was shaped by the work of Panu Pihkala, an interdisciplinary scholar in eco-emotions research based at the University of Helsinki. He outlined a \u201ccoping model\u201d that emphasizes how important it is for people, including kids, to express emotions, learn how to regulate them, take action based on them, and form meaning from them\u2014all while practicing self-care and taking healthy distance from big feelings when necessary. <\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWhen people feel genuinely heard and held in their distress, they tend to move quite naturally toward wanting to do something.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Liza Jachens, psychologist and assistant professor, University of Nottingham school of medicine<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the study, Britta Ekl\u00f6f, a clinical psychologist based in Sweden, found that students in the climate program were relieved to share their bad feelings and see them mirrored by others, something that wasn\u2019t generally happening in their interactions with adults. Grownups didn\u2019t want to dwell on negative emotions with them, and their parents tended to try to soothe them. \u201cThe recommendation instead is to validate and share,\u201d Ekl\u00f6f says. And then, of course, give them something they can do. <\/p>\n

Implementing the rest of the coping model\u2014\u201cfinding meaning and hope in a hopeless situation,\u201d as Ekl\u00f6f puts it\u2014can be harder for students and teachers. To do that, she says, kids have to admit that they can\u2019t control the future and consider what they personally want to cultivate\u2014not necessarily to fix the whole planet, but to make their immediate world a better place. For example, they might take out their neighbors\u2019 recycling when it\u2019s raining or join a local beach-cleanup effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese days it feels like the good values of humanity are being shredded,\u201d Ekl\u00f6f says. \u201cBut you can say, \u2018I don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen, or if this will have a positive influence or not, but this is what I stand for.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Historical moments<\/h3>\n

The world doesn\u2019t appear to be chilling out anytime soon, literally or philosophically. And so it\u2019s good that programs like Force of Nature and GGN-Z are digging into the effectiveness of their techniques: We might need more of them soon, and more ways for young people to find their footing no matter how the polycrisis (d)evolves. <\/p>\n

Sullivan-Tailyour, who recently graduated from King\u2019s College London and now leads in-person \u201cclimate cafes\u201d with Force of Nature (among other eco-jobs), has been thinking more about how problems in the environment are bound up with those in the social, economic, and political realms. \u201cThe intersectionalities that we have in this issue are so much more than just plastic bottles,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

Those other issues are, in fact, tangled up in her climate worry these days. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing the deterioration of democracy itself in many places. The shift to the far right that we\u2019re having at the moment across the world is deeply, deeply terrifying,\u201d she says. \u201cI think we\u2019ve reached moments in our history that we never expected to.\u201d She tries, though, to look for the hopeful things\u2014and for that, she also turns to history. <\/p>\n

After all, the world has always been bad in myriad ways: Children used to die frequently, everyone <\/em>died of now-\u00adpreventable diseases, women didn\u2019t have rights, slavery proliferated, the bubonic plague killed half of Europe, fascism spread, wars went worldwide. And yet people kept on living their lives\u2014and attempting to make them better. <\/p>\n

Ekl\u00f6f thinks looking to the resilience and power of people from the past can actually build and bolster hope for the future. Just as humans can change the planet for the worse, they can change it for the better. And they have. \u201cThat\u2019s actually one of my recommendations, to have that in an intervention: Talk about Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, the suffragettes,\u201d Ekl\u00f6f says. <\/p>\n

It can help, she says, to \u201clook at things in the past where things have been made right again.\u201d That\u2019s even happened in the climate space: When humans realized that the ozone layer was withering away from the effects of synthetic chemicals, the vast majority of countries ratified a treaty to ban most of those chemicals. And the ozone started healing.<\/p>\n

Sullivan-Tailyour, a few countries away from Ekl\u00f6f, has come to that idea on her own. And for inspiration, lately, she\u2019s been thinking about her ancestors and the lives they led. \u201cIf they [were] able to go through it and get through it,\u201d she says, \u201cwe also should be able to get through it too.\u201d <\/p>\n

Sarah Scoles<\/a> is a freelance journalist based in Colorado. Her most recent book is <\/em>Countdown: The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometime in the late 2000s, Pim Sullivan-Tailyour was sitting in the back of a car, headed toward her great-grandmother\u2019s tiny town in the south of Thailand. She watched big mountains pass by out the window. She was just six years old but was about to be hit by an adult-size […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[67],"class_list":["post-7957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mit-feed","tag-mit-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7957\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}