Living With Uncertainty: The Psychology of Climate Worry, Political Stress, and the News Cycle
Ask someone in midlife or later life how they feel about the state of the world and you will often get a pause before an answer.
Often not because they have no view, but because there are too many to sort through at once.
The summers are hotter than the ones they remember. The news arrives faster than it can be processed. Politics has become something people manage rather than follow. And underneath it all, sits a nagging question: what kind of world am I handing over?
This is not a small feeling. It is also not, in most cases, a disorder.
But it can become one. And the line between reasonable concern about an uncertain world and clinically significant anxiety or depression is one of the things a clinical psychologist can help someone discover.
If your concern is specifically about climate, you may want to start by exploring our article on climate anxiety in midlife and older age, which looks at that topic in more depth. This article is about the wider context.
The problem is not the news. It is often the not knowing
The mind is reasonably good at coping with bad news that has already happened. What the mind sometimes struggles with is bad news that might happen, in a form that is uncertain, at a time that cannot be estimated. This reflects a low tolerance of uncertainty, which is the tendency to find ambiguity aversive, and to experience it as threatening instead of just unresolved.
A large analysis by an Australian team at Curtin University in 2019, found moderate associations between difficulty tolerating uncertainty and symptoms across generalised anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder, agoraphobia, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, and eating disorders (McEvoy et al., 2019). Difficulty tolerating uncertainty is one of the most consistently supported transdiagnostic factors we have.
In particular, this matters for climate and politics, because both are often incredibly uncertain. Neither offers a resolution date. Neither can be settled by more information.
Which is why the most common coping strategy fails. Worry is an attempt to ‘think one's way to certainty’. When certainty is unavailable, worry does not terminate. It loops. And it doesn’t change anything.
Uncertainty also shows up in more personal forms in the second half of life, particularly around health. Our article on anxiety in the second half of life looks at health anxieties and existential worries in particular.
Three kinds of uncertainty, and why they behave differently
Climate distress
Climate-related distress is not one emotion, and treating it as one is part of why people get stuck.
An Australian national survey study distinguished various eco-related emotions, encompassing eco-anxiety, eco-depression, and eco-anger (Stanley et al., 2021). Eco-anger predicted better mental health outcomes and greater engagement in both personal pro-environmental behaviour and collective action. In other words, when you respond to anger in a positive way, it can be motivating and lead to action and change. However, eco-anxiety and eco-depression were associated with lower wellbeing. Although those who felt eco-depressed were more likely to participate in collective action, those who felt eco-anxious were least likely to.
That finding is worth sitting with. Anger, in this context, was the emotion associated with agency. Anxiety was the one associated with retreat.
There is also a distinctly Australian contribution to this literature. In 2007, a research team working in the Upper Hunter Valley and drought-affected rural New South Wales coined the term ‘solastalgia’ to describe the distress people feel when the place they live in changes around them while they remain in it (Albrecht et al., 2007). Instead of homesickness, it’s like a grief experienced at home. The researchers noted that this distress was intensified by a sense of powerlessness over the change.
Now a seminal paper, the concept of has held up. Many people in midlife and later life are describing solastalgia without having a word for it: the creek that no longer runs, the birds that no longer come, the fish that don’t seem to be there, and summer that no longer feels like the one in memory.
Grief for a place, is one of several forms of loss that do not fit the usual template. Ambiguous loss describes another, which is explored in our article on families living with the fluctuating and progressive changes of dementia.
Political stress
The research on political stress is a more recent development, and one almost entirely from the United States. That limits how directly it transfers to Australia, and it should be read as indicative rather than representative.
In a 2019 study, using a demographically representative US sample, it was found that substantial numbers of adults reported that political exposure had cost them sleep, friendships, emotional stability, and in more extreme cases perceived physical health (Smith et al., 2019). A follow-up study comparing samples in 2017 and 2020 found these self-reported effects remained stable or increased slightly across that period (Smith, 2022).
The mechanism appears to be less about the content of anyone's political views and more about the structure of political engagement itself, whether for example it was identity-linked, constantly updating, argumentative, and without an endpoint.
In all of these studies, distress was reported across the political spectrum.
The news cycle that feeds itself
There is one finding here that changes how people relate to their phones once they know it.
A study conducted over three years, of a US national sample of 4,165 individuals, found that media exposure to collective trauma and subsequent distress operate in a cycle rather than a straight line (Thompson et al., 2019). Media exposure predicted posttraumatic stress symptoms months later. Those symptoms predicted worry about future negative events two years on. That worry then predicted increased media consumption and greater acute stress when the next event occurred.
Related studies found that the qualities of media exposure matter; not whether someone was exposed, but the amount of consumption and graphic content contributing to distress and functional impairment (Holman et al., 2020).
In other words, checking the news to feel less anxious is a strategy that researchers indicate is counterproductive.
How ageing changes this picture
Here is where stereotypes about older people being less engaged and less concerned about a future they may not see, are way off the mark.
The emotional advantage is real, and it shows up under pressure
A 2025 study of a nationally representative US panel of almost 10,000 individuals, examined depression and anxiety symptoms in individuals who had experienced extreme weather events and related adversities such as property loss (Strough et al., 2025). Those who experienced adversity reported more anxiety and depression than those who did not, indicating the mental health costs of extreme weather.
However, older age was associated with fewer symptoms of both depression and anxiety. And the association was strongest in the group that had experienced adversity, not weakest.
This is consistent with a growing body of research. Emotional experience tends to become increasingly focused on the positive aspects of our experience, as we age (Carstensen et al., 2011). During the early COVID-19 pandemic, when older adults faced the highest medical risk, a representative US sample aged 18 to 76 years, found that older age was associated with better emotional wellbeing regardless of perceived risk (Carstensen et al., 2020).
However, as a counterweight, a large study of 23,350 participants in 63 countries found that while the age advantage persisted throughout the pandemic, this emotional advantage had declined during the pandemic in comparison to before (Sun & Sauter, 2021).
As such, although emotional wellbeing tends to increase as we age, major events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, sustained unavoidable stress nonetheless still erodes some of those advantages. See for example, our article on the mental health impacts of ageism as we age.
Reasoning about conflict improves with age
There is also a finding that deserves more attention than it gets.
In a representative community sample, participants were given scenarios involving intergroup and interpersonal conflicts and asked to predict how they would unfold (Grossmann et al., 2010). Older participants made greater use of higher-order reasoning: recognising multiple perspectives, allowing for compromise, and acknowledging the limits of what could be known. The age effect held at every level of socioeconomic status, education, and measured intelligence.
This study indicates that such cognitive skills that older adults bring, are exactly the skills that polarised political environments require and rarely reward. This is the same pattern described in the midlife advantage in the age of AI: the capacities that accumulate with experience are becoming more valuable, not less.
Caring about a future you may not see
The stereotype that older adults are indifferent to climate change does not hold either.
A 2026 study comparing 235 older adults (aged 64 to 93) and 238 younger adults in Hong Kong found no significant age difference in ecological risk perception, but found that older adults reported more recycling, more political support for environmental action, and more consumption-related pro-environmental behaviour than younger adults (Lin & Fung, 2026). They also scored higher on social generativity, the concern for the wellbeing of future generations.
When asked why, older adults gave more environmental, habitual, and norm-based reasons. Younger adults were more likely to cite saving money.
The sample is urban and Hong Kong-based, so caution about generalising is warranted. But it sits alongside a broader literature on generativity as a feature of later life rather than an exception to it (Villar et al., 2023).
The motivation is different from the one that drives younger people. It is less "this will happen to me" and more "this will happen after me, and I would like to have been useful."
Such contribution and meaning are closely linked to health outcomes in later life. Our article on purpose in life sets out what the long-term evidence shows.
When concern about the world becomes something a clinical psychologist could look at
Most people worried about climate or politics don’t need therapy. They need someway to transform that feeling into action and positive change. However, there are recognisable points at which the distress stops being proportionate and starts impacting day-to-day life in ways that reflect a clinical problem.
Consider seeing your GP or seeking further assessment when:
Worry is persistent, hard to control, and spreading beyond the original topic into daily life, such as work, health, finances, family, and the future generally
Sleep is consistently disrupted by rumination about the state of the world, which carries its own consequences for mood and cognition
News checking has become compulsive, and stopping this habit produces distress
Motivation, interest, and pleasure in ordinary life have flattened
Decisions about the future are being avoided or abandoned because the future feels pointless
Physical symptoms have appeared: tension, gut symptoms, fatigue, appetite change
Relationships are being strained by political conflict or by withdrawal
A specific event, a fire, a flood, a diagnosis, a loss, has left symptoms that have not settled after several weeks
Any of these can meet criteria for a diagnosable condition. The most common are adjustment disorder, generalised anxiety disorder, and depression, which is frequently missed in later life. These types of diagnosable conditions are covered under Medicare's Better Access scheme.
What the evidence says helps
Building tolerance for uncertainty rather than chasing certainty
This is the central therapeutic target, and it responds to treatment.
A 2023 review of 26 studies (1,199 adults with generalised anxiety disorder) found that evidence-based psychological treatment produced large reductions in intolerance of uncertainty from pre-treatment to post-treatment and at later points in time, with comparable improvements in worry, anxiety, and depression (Wilson et al., 2023). This study indicated that the more session time was spent directly targeting intolerance of uncertainty, the larger the effects on both uncertainty and worry.
Such work is not about reassuring someone that things will be fine. It is about building the capacity to sit with uncertainty in an often uncertain world.
Getting more precise about which emotion is present
Given that eco-anger, eco-anxiety, and eco-depression predict such different outcomes (Stanley et al., 2021), one of the most useful early pieces of work is simply distinguishing them.
People frequently arrive describing "anxiety" about the world when what they are carrying is grief, or moral injury, or a suppressed and valid anger. Naming it accurately changes the approach.
Collective action rather than solitary action
This finding is practical and slightly counterintuitive.
In a study of 284 younger adults in the United States, climate change anxiety was associated with generalised anxiety symptoms, and impairment to daily living was associated with symptoms characteristic of depression (Schwartz et al., 2023). For these participants, engaging in collective action reduced the impact of climate anxiety and depressive symptoms, whereas individual action did not.
The sample was young and American, so it should not be over-extended to older Australians. However, the mechanism proposed is plausible across ages: doing something alone rarely feels large enough to touch a problem this size, while doing something with other people restores a sense of agency that solitary effort does not.
For midlife and older adults, this points somewhere useful. Community groups, local council submissions, taking care of the land, mentoring, advocacy organisations, and intergenerational projects tend to do more for mood than a more rigorous recycling routine.
This overlaps with what helps loneliness, which is more common in midlife and later life than most people assume.
Changing the relationship with information, not the amount of it
Given the cycle documented by Thompson et al. (2019), blanket avoidance is not the answer either. Avoidance maintains anxiety in the long run.
What tends to work better is deliberate structure: a defined time to engage with news, a defined set of sources, and a decision made in advance about what, if anything, will be done with the information.
The test is not how informed a person is. It is whether the information is being converted into something actionable and positive.
Naming the loss as loss
Where solastalgia is present, treating it as anxiety will miss.
Grief for a changed landscape responds to the things grief responds to generally: acknowledgement, expression, ritual, and company. It does not respond well to being argued with or optimised away.
What tends not to help
Reassurance-seeking, which provides brief relief and strengthens the underlying loop
‘Doomscrolling’ framed as staying informed
Debating relatives on social media
Forced positivity, which asks people to abandon their authenticity and an accurate perception of reality in order to feel better
Being told that because it’s out of your hands, it’s best not to think about it
Frequently asked questions
Is climate anxiety a mental illness?
No. Climate anxiety, eco-anxiety, and solastalgia are not diagnoses in the DSM-5-TR or ICD-11. They describe understandable emotional responses to real circumstances. However, distress about climate change can co-occur with, contribute to, or be a presenting feature of diagnosable conditions such as generalised anxiety disorder, adjustment disorder, and depression. Research has found climate change anxiety significantly associated with generalised anxiety symptoms, and functional impairment associated with depressive symptoms (Schwartz et al., 2023). The question is not whether the concern is legitimate. It is whether the distress has become disproportionate, persistent, and disabling.
Are older adults more or less affected by climate and political stress?
The evidence points in a more encouraging direction than most people expect. A 2025 nationally representative US study found that older age was associated with fewer depression and anxiety symptoms following extreme weather adversity, with the age advantage strongest among those who had experienced adversity (Strough et al., 2025). This is consistent with broader findings that emotional experience improves across adulthood (Carstensen et al., 2011). That said, prolonged unavoidable stress can narrow the advantage (Sun & Sauter, 2021), and older adults face greater physical vulnerability during extreme weather. Emotional resilience and practical vulnerability are two different things, and both are real.
I feel guilty for not doing more. Is that normal?
It is extremely common, and it usually reflects a mismatch between the scale of the problem and the scale of any individual response. Research suggests that the antidote is not doing more alone. Collective action, rather than individual action, was what attenuated the link between climate anxiety and depressive symptoms in one study of young adults (Schwartz et al., 2023). Guilt tends to shrink when action becomes shared.
Should I just stop watching the news?
Complete avoidance tends to backfire, because avoidance is one of the mechanisms that maintains anxiety. What the research argues against is unstructured, high-volume, emotionally driven consumption. A three-year longitudinal study found that media exposure and distress form a self-reinforcing cycle, with earlier distress predicting greater subsequent media consumption and greater acute stress at the next event (Thompson et al., 2019). A defined window, chosen reliable sources, and a clear sense of what you will do with the information works better than either constant checking or total withdrawal.
I am angry about all of this. Is that unhealthy?
Not necessarily, and possibly the opposite. Australian national survey data found that eco-anger predicted better mental health outcomes and greater engagement in climate action, while eco-anxiety and eco-depression were associated with lower wellbeing and, in the case of eco-anxiety, less participation in collective action (Stanley et al., 2021). Anger becomes a problem when it is chronic, undirected, and corrosive to relationships. Directed anger or frustration that produces action appears to function differently.
My adult children are distressed about the future and I do not know what to say.
You are probably better equipped for this conversation than you think. Research on wise reasoning found that older adults made greater use of reasoning that recognises multiple perspectives, allows for compromise, and acknowledges the limits of knowledge (Grossmann et al., 2010). What tends to help is not reassurance that everything will be fine, which younger people generally do not believe, but company in the uncertainty, and a demonstration that it is possible to live purposefully without a guaranteed outcome. Doing something together matters more than saying the right thing.
I am in my thirties, caring for parents and worrying about the world. Is this article for me?
Yes. The research on uncertainty, worry, and coping is not age-bound, and the responsibilities that shape midlife arrive on their own schedule. Caring for ageing parents, career reinvention, a health scare, or grief can arrive in your late twenties as readily as in your fifties. It is never too early, and never too late, to get support for how you are carrying it.
Do I need a GP referral to see a psychologist about this?
No referral is needed to book. However, if a GP determines that you have a diagnosable mental health condition and are likely to benefit from structured psychological support, they can prepare a Mental Health Treatment Plan, which allows Medicare rebates and significantly reduces the cost of sessions. For example, adjustment disorder, generalised anxiety disorder, depression, and trauma-related conditions are all recognised under Better Access. Our Referral Assistance page explains the process and includes information you can take to your GP appointment. Sessions are conducted by telehealth across Australia.
What the research tells us
Intolerance of uncertainty shows moderate associations with symptoms across generalised anxiety disorder, social anxiety, panic disorder, agoraphobia, OCD, depression, and eating disorders, with effect sizes generally between r = .40 and .57 (McEvoy et al., 2019).
Eco-anger predicted better mental health and greater climate action in Australian national survey data, while eco-anxiety and eco-depression were associated with lower wellbeing (Stanley et al., 2021).
Solastalgia, distress caused by environmental change experienced at home, was first described in drought-affected and mining-affected communities in New South Wales, and was intensified by a sense of powerlessness (Albrecht et al., 2007).
Large numbers of US adults report that political engagement has cost them sleep, friendships, and emotional stability, with these self-reports stable or slightly increased between 2017 and 2020 and across the whole political spectrum (Smith et al., 2019; Smith, 2022).
Media exposure to collective trauma and psychological distress operate in a self-reinforcing cycle across a three-year period rather than a one-way relationship (Thompson et al., 2019).
Older age was associated with fewer depression and anxiety symptoms following extreme weather adversity, with the advantage strongest among those who had experienced such adversity (Strough et al., 2025).
Age advantages in emotional experience persisted during the COVID-19 pandemic (Carstensen et al., 2020), though a large cross-national study found the advantage was reduced compared with pre-pandemic levels (Sun & Sauter, 2021).
Older adults made greater use of reasoning that recognises multiple perspectives and the limits of knowledge, with the effect holding across socioeconomic status, education, and IQ (Grossmann et al., 2010).
Older adults reported more recycling, more political support for environmental action, and higher social generativity than younger adults, despite no age difference in perceived ecological risk (Lin & Fung, 2026).
Collective action, but not individual action, attenuated the association between climate anxiety and depressive symptoms in a study of emerging adults (Schwartz et al., 2023).
Psychological treatment produced large reductions in intolerance of uncertainty in adults with generalised anxiety disorder, with larger effects when more session time was spent targeting uncertainty directly (Wilson et al., 2023).
Living well without knowing how the uncertainty ends
There is a version of this conversation that ends in resignation. “It is what it is,” nothing can be done, best not to think about it.
That version is understandable and it is also a trap, because resignation is not calm. It is anxiety that has stopped moving.
The more useful position is harder and more interesting. It involves accepting that certainty is not necessarily coming, that the future is often open, and that an individual can act meaningfully inside that openness rather than waiting for certainty.
This is, incidentally, something people in midlife and later life have often already learned somewhere else. Anyone who has sat with a diagnosis, an ambiguous prognosis, a marriage in trouble, a child whose path is unclear, or a parent whose decline has no timetable, has already done a version of this work. The research on growth after adversity suggests that capacity is not just retained. It can deepen.
The evidence indicates such individuals carry that capacity forward. Emotional experience tends to improve. Reasoning about difficult conflicts tends to get better. Concern for people who come next tends to grow rather than shrink.
Ageism, not age, is the problem here. Ageism often conveys to older adults that their view of the future is no longer their business. The research says something closer to the opposite: that the people with the longest view of how things change may be among the better placed to live with a future that has not been decided.
A longer life should mean more joy, not more resignation. That includes the parts of life we can’t necessarily control or perceive we have little influence over.
If you haven’t done therapy online before, here is what to expect from a first session.
If worry about the world is affecting your day to day life, book a free 20-minute consult today, to discuss your therapy needs.
References & reading
Albrecht, G., Sartore, G.-M., Connor, L., Higginbotham, N., Freeman, S., Kelly, B., Stain, H., Tonna, A., & Pollard, G. (2007). Solastalgia: The distress caused by environmental change. Australasian Psychiatry, 15(S1), S95–S98. https://doi.org/10.1080/10398560701701288
Carstensen, L. L., Shavit, Y. Z., & Barnes, J. T. (2020). Age advantages in emotional experience persist even under threat from the COVID-19 pandemic. Psychological Science, 31(11), 1374–1385. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620967261
Carstensen, L. L., Turan, B., Scheibe, S., Ram, N., Ersner-Hershfield, H., Samanez-Larkin, G. R., Brooks, K. P., & Nesselroade, J. R. (2011). Emotional experience improves with age: Evidence based on over 10 years of experience sampling. Psychology and Aging, 26(1), 21–33. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021285
Charles, S. T. (2010). Strength and vulnerability integration: A model of emotional well-being across adulthood. Psychological Bulletin, 136(6), 1068–1091. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021232
Grossmann, I., Na, J., Varnum, M. E. W., Park, D. C., Kitayama, S., & Nisbett, R. E. (2010). Reasoning about social conflicts improves into old age. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(16), 7246–7250. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1001715107
Holman, E. A., Garfin, D. R., Lubens, P., & Silver, R. C. (2020). Media exposure to collective trauma, mental health, and functioning: Does it matter what you see? Clinical Psychological Science, 8(1), 111–124. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702619858300
Lin, Z., & Fung, H. H. (2026). Age differences in pro-environmental behaviors: Is it about me or future generations? European Journal of Ageing, 23, Article 22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10433-026-00918-9
McEvoy, P. M., Hyett, M. P., Shihata, S., Price, J. E., & Strachan, L. (2019). The impact of methodological and measurement factors on transdiagnostic associations with intolerance of uncertainty: A meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 73, Article 101778. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2019.101778
Schwartz, S. E. O., Benoit, L., Clayton, S., Parnes, M. F., Swenson, L., & Lowe, S. R. (2023). Climate change anxiety and mental health: Environmental activism as buffer. Current Psychology, 42(20), 16708–16721. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-02735-6
Smith, K. B. (2022). Politics is making us sick: The negative impact of political engagement on public health during the Trump administration. PLOS ONE, 17(1), Article e0262022. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262022
Smith, K. B., Hibbing, M. V., & Hibbing, J. R. (2019). Friends, relatives, sanity, and health: The costs of politics. PLOS ONE, 14(9), Article e0221870. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221870
Stanley, S. K., Hogg, T. L., Leviston, Z., & Walker, I. (2021). From anger to action: Differential impacts of eco-anxiety, eco-depression, and eco-anger on climate action and wellbeing. The Journal of Climate Change and Health, 1, Article 100003. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joclim.2021.100003
Strough, J., Best, R., Parker, A. M., Azhar, E., & Atshan, S. (2025). Older age is associated with fewer depression and anxiety symptoms following extreme weather adversity. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 22(10), Article 1548. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph22101548
Strough, J., Parker, A. M., Ayer, L., Parks, V., & Finucane, M. L. (2024). Aging and emotional well-being after disasters: Vulnerability and resilience. The Gerontologist, 64(3), Article gnad099. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnad099
Sun, R., & Sauter, D. (2021). Sustained stress reduces the age advantages in emotional experience of older adults: Commentary on Carstensen et al. (2020). Psychological Science, 32(12), 2035–2041. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976211052476
Thompson, R. R., Jones, N. M., Holman, E. A., & Silver, R. C. (2019). Media exposure to mass violence events can fuel a cycle of distress. Science Advances, 5(4), Article eaav3502. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aav3502
Villar, F., Serrat, R., & Pratt, M. W. (2023). Older age as a time to contribute: A scoping review of generativity in later life. Ageing & Society, 43(8), 1860–1881. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0144686X21001379
Wilson, E. J., Abbott, M. J., & Norton, A. R. (2023). The impact of psychological treatment on intolerance of uncertainty in generalized anxiety disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 97, Article 102729. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2023.102729
