Season 4, Episode 21: Climate Psychology in Italy with Matteo Innocenti
image credit | Alaric Duan
The Climate Change and Happiness podcast is focusing on our colleagues in Italy this season. In this episode, Thomas and Panu spoke with Milan psychiatrist Matteo Innocenti to discuss the growing awareness of climate psychology in the country. Matteo described his personal journey inspired by witnessing the effects of pollution in South Asia and how the COVID-era loss of his grandfather—a key environmental role model—inspired Matteo to devote his research to nature and issues like climate anxiety.
Links
Mentioned in the Episode:
Matteo’s upcoming book: "Beyond Eco-Anxiety: A Practical Guide to Navigating the Emotions of the Climate Crisis," with preface by Panu Pihkala
Graphic novel by Philippe Squarzoni (2014) Climate Changed: A Personal Journey through the Science
Transcript
Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.
[music: “CC&H theme music”]
Introduction voice: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness (CC&H), an international podcast that explores the personal side of climate change. Your feelings, what the crisis means to you, and how to cope and thrive. And now, your hosts, Thomas Doherty and Panu Pihkala.
Thomas Doherty: Well hello, I’m Thomas Doherty.
Panu Pihkala: And I am Panu Pihkala.
Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness. This is our podcast, a show for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about climate change and other environmental issues and their connections with nature and all kinds of things. And that's what we talk about on this podcast. And we often have guests and we're really lucky today to have a guest joining us. I'll let our guest introduce himself.
Matteo Innocenti: Hello everyone, my name is Matteo Innocenti and I'm a medical doctor. I'm a psychiatrist coming from Italy, mainly Milan and Florence. Welcome to everyone.
Doherty: Panu and I have both read Matteo's work and we're really interested in talking about the culture and beliefs around climate change in Italy. We have listeners in over 35 countries and so it's really neat to be talking about these topics with people around the world. Panu, do you want to get us started?
Pihkala: Warmly welcome also on my behalf Matteo. Lovely to have you here. We've had the pleasure of meeting live once last December when I was visiting Italy for some speaking assignments and its very important work that you and your colleagues are doing in Italy. Italy and Finland are both European countries, but the direct impacts of climate change are already more severe in Italy so that’s one of the differences. But there’s also the more indirect and ambient impacts in both countries. Before we dig deeper into all that you do, I’d like to ask you to reflect a bit on your journey towards this point where you have been working intensively with climate psychology and climate anxiety for many years. So how was that journey for you? How did you end up becoming who you are now?
Innocenti: It's a strange story because I started as a psychiatrist and a psychotherapist, and my main field of research was anorexia nervosa and I used it to work in a hospital, but I decided in 2020 to have a vacation and go to South Asia. During my trip in South Asia, I saw a lot of things that I've never seen before. I saw the effect of anthropization, the effect of pollution. I saw a lot of places that I have seen before on my computer, on Instagram, and in my mind, I used to imagine these places in a way. But when I went there, the reality was completely different because I saw a lot of pollution and a lot of people that were suffering directly from the effect of anthropic impact, mainly that of climate change. But I also saw the effect of weather disasters and climate change disasters. And so, something changed in my heart and in my soul because I started to feel this sensation of shame and guilt. And I started to want to go into a deeper consciousness about this problem. And all the seconds of my life where I started to study and to orient my study topic in this field, I found that this topic was even bigger and even more complicated.
And so, I started to change my research topic. My chief didn't agree with this because in Italy it is somehow a politicized problem and they didn’t agree with my decision, but I changed university for this. It became COVID and my grandfather taught me how to have a deep contact with nature. When I was a child, I used to spend a lot of weekends with my grandfather in nature and he taught me a lot of things about people, about respecting other people, animals, and nature. He was a nature photographer. And so, he died. It was one of the first thousand of people that died due to COVID-19. And so, I faced this suffering and this sadness by turning back to nature. And I started to study in nature because in Italy, in Florence, we have trees and forests very near the city. And so, I went there to reflect on myself and reflect on climate change.
I started to write a book on this topic, and I started to research climate change. And in one moment, I realized that I felt this urgency and this need to do something. And so, I had this idea to study about my psychological situation because I wasn't able to define what I was feeling. I started to study, and I found this article by Professor Susan Clayton who developed the climate change anxiety scale. I translated and validated it in Italian and I started my research topic and started to write the book. I used nature and sadness for the loss of my grandpa. I didn’t only study and find the mechanism and the pathological or psychopathological mechanism of the impact of climate change on mental health but also to find the solution to help people and to help the anxiety, the sense of guilt and all the emotion arising from climate change and other problems in pollution that we are facing now. And so, I use nature and all the things that I learned from my grandfather to try solutions to help myself. First, myself because I was extremely suffering from climate change anxiety and other climate emotions.
At this moment, when me and my colleague finished the book, we said, we wrote eight chapters on how climate change impacts mental health. But now we have to give hope to people, and we have to write how to deal with these emotions and how to help other people deal with them. And so, we tried to find solutions and I used the memory of my grandfather and the connection with nature that he fostered in me to start this trip. I started with this beautiful trip, and I met a lot of people, like you, that work in this field and tried to find the light in this sad problem of our world. And this is my journey and now I'm here. I'm grateful firstly to my grandfather and also to you for inviting me and all the people that helped me in this process.
Pihkala: Warm thanks, Matteo, for sharing all that. It's quite a story connecting this grief about your grandfather with climate grief and ecological grief and also the deep motivations which can arise in the midst of these kinds of hardships and suffering. So, I very much appreciate the fact that you were able to direct that energy towards helping others and also helping yourself. And so, this goes to some pretty ancient principles in helping others. But Thomas, what's on your mind when you listen to Matteo’s story?
Doherty: Well, I just really appreciate listening, Matteo, it’s all very well said. You know, our podcast is so great because Panu and I talk about our stories and then every time we invite a guest, they tell their story. We are all basically telling the same story. We all have a version of this awareness of nature in the natural world. We don't have to read the research because we can see it in our own story. Susan Clayton and other researchers have found that people's connection with nature often stems from having a mentor or a parent or grandparent that spent time with them in nature or having some waking up experience due to traveling around the world or having a disaster visit them. So, this is a universal story. And I think every country in the world, every region, has a version of it. And then also, the risks that people sometimes need to take to work on this. To go against their advisors or their mentors in whatever field they're in to focus on climate. Because yes, it can be seen as political or something controversial to get involved in, so we want to stay away from that and stay with the status quo. But we have to break free and take a risk and follow our hearts. It's a great story. I know some other people that we're going to be interviewing and in Italy, I know some therapists that I've worked with, and I feel like you're all pathfinders there. What's the current state of affairs in Italy? Do you think the Italian health profession is starting to become more open to talking about these issues?
Innocenti: Thank you for the comment about my story. I totally agree with you that we share stories with other people and a lot of people have the same face of different stories. I think that in the last two years, awareness started to increase, not only regarding mental health but also regarding all the effects of climate change on physical health. A lot of universities started grants or PhDs about this topic and the awareness increased in people because we are facing in a very deep manner the direct effect of climate change, because we face a lot of droughts and flooding during the last two years. So, the awareness of people impacted by climate change increased, but also among the health experts it increased, and a lot of people started to study it. We serve as a hub because a lot of psychologists or mental health experts call us to collaborate. A lot of universities collaborate with our association to create events aimed to increase awareness or to help people that are suffering, and a lot of universities are starting projects aimed to assess the psychological impact of climate change.
In my opinion, the attention paid by media or experts in this field follows a period of the years because when it's hotter during the spring or in summer, the eco-anxiety and the eco-emotions start to increase, and the attention paid by the media starts to increase as well. So, you find more articles, you find more projects, you find more energy, and you listen to more news in the media talking about this project. A lot of people are pushed by this sense of anxiety and guilt arising from the sensation that you are not doing what is necessary to do. A lot of people have a lot of energy too and they start a lot of projects. Many journalists call me to interview, or you see a lot of news in the newspapers. Simultaneously, you listen to the increase of catastrophic ways to give information, this sense of anxiety and sense of hopelessness and helplessness. And when the temperatures start to go down and everything is restored and the temperature returns to normal, you don't find any more of this energy and people stop studying the topic. You don't find news in the newspaper about climate change, and you miss this energy. And so, I think that it follows a stationarity.
In Italy, there are no structured projects that continue throughout the years. So, the awareness and the energy of the people in studying this problem is arising, but I think that we are moved in a non-continuous manner by people who are pushed by emotions, anxiety or fear and when the stimulus stops, they stop working on it. This is a problem, and we try to maintain stable energy and attention, but it's very difficult. I think that there is no organization or main volunteers from an institution to take and maintain the attention at a minimum level or the same level during the whole year.
Pihkala: Yeah, thanks Matteo for those reflections and I've heard some similar observations about how seasons and climate related events such as heat waves affect people's attention and of course risk perception and other things. One of the big challenges nowadays is that climate issues can feel so difficult for people that they sort of intuitively often try to stay away from them. Then, that's a problem because we need engagement from them during other times than the crisis time. In Finland, we've had the National Social and Health sector project on eco-anxiety and eco-emotions that got extra years of funding but it's also ending at the end of this year. So, we are looking toward a similar problem of who's going to continue the work after that.
But for the listeners, I wanted to clarify that Matteo is chairing the Italian Climate Anxiety Association, a network of people working on these topics and there's also counselling or therapeutic work that you, Matteo, and others are doing. So, there’s a sort of combination of volunteer work and psychological medical professional work that is going on and in Italy, some events have made the headlines like heavy rains. There's been a mixed record on the responses of the Italian governments on these climate related disasters. And I know, Matteo, that you and colleagues have been working on those areas and topics. So, I wondered if you want to say something about those floods and the societal responses and climate emotions related to them?
Innocenti: Yeah, thank you so much. Yes, we faced two heavy floods in my region, nearby Florence and in Emilia Romagna. They faced similar events 30 and 40 years ago because they are areas very sensitive to floodings because there’s a lot of speculation in construction and use of soil during these years. They constructed a lot of quarries near a river and when there are floods and it heavily rains, they are more sensitive to the floods. We helped people at different times because we immediately went to help people and we saw the echoed effects. This was the first time we saw a lot of anxiety and fear. They were the main emotions because people told us that in a few minutes, they found a lot of water inside their homes, and they couldn’t do anything. They were scared to die or to lose everything. Some people told us that they didn’t know what to do.
An older guy told me he didn’t know if the better option was to go out and take his car in order to protect the car from the flooding, because a car costs a lot of money, or to stay in his house and protect himself because another guy exit from his house and go to save the his car but one guy died and the other one had a lot of problems. So, the old man with whom I talked to decided to stay home and stay safe. It was very sad because he told me about the trauma. Because for him, losing his car represented a very big trauma. His car served daughter and the family. And so, he lost a lot of money and all the money that he had for other things he was forced to spend again to buy another car. I was very impressed by the story because I think that when we talk about the traumatic impact of climate change, we talk frequently about trauma, intending it as psychological trauma represented by losing someone or losing a part of our body or having a very profound situation that makes you fearful. But trauma can also be represented by a loss of a car because it's a perpetuation of the trauma. You have the trauma represented by the flooding and you have the fear of losing your parents or dying, but you lost your car and so the day after you have to face money problems. You have to face problems in deciding with your family if you have to buy a car and lose your money. And so, it creates not only traumas, but also societal and family problems. This is the first thing I saw.
Additionally, in Campi Bisenzio, the people faced not only one flood, but three in different times. And the first time, they were scared. A lot of people lost photos or other important things that they have, like money. But I felt this energy, this sense of hope, cooperation, and resilience, because people became more connected with other people. I felt this sense of community the first time. But the second time and the third time this changed. The people started to lose this sense of hope and this sense of cooperation. I've seen that the soil changes from one street to another street and so when the river starts flooding you can see a house completely devastated from the flood and the other one in front of them completely perfect. And so, if you face flooding one time, you are very sad and you feel this sense of hopelessness, but people are extremely full of energy and hope and start to cooperate. If I have a house that is immune from the flooding, I want to help the other people but the second time, people lose a little bit of their energy and so they cooperate less and the third time, even more. I saw some other emotions such as terror and anger and loss of energy and environmental melancholy or other bad emotions.
This time, we started more work by helping people and we started making them aware because people were afraid and angry, but they didn't know who was responsible for it. Some of them were afraid of politicians, others with God, and others didn't know. And so, our main work is to make people aware of what happened and let them know about different responsibilities. The other thing is to implement their sense of self-efficacy and with some other techniques accept commitment to therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. We try to help them accept what happened and to integrate their emotions inside themselves and work on their guilt or anger. We also try to foster resilience and cooperation. We try to restore the cooperation that they lost during the different floods because community cooperation is fundamental because we are a big group of people that share differences. For example, I'm lucky, you are unlucky. I have money, you don't have money. Today I have energy to work, but the day after I don't have energy and I'm sad. And if it's the contrary for other people, if you help me, we create a community that is resilient and collaborative to handle the sadness. A lot of people that live in Campi Bisenzo, where the flooding happened, are now afraid that it could happen again and every time it starts to rain, they have this sense of anxiety that starts immediately.
The work that we conducted to let them know that when it starts to rain, they have to think two things. One, I know what could happen and it can happen, and I know what I have to do. And so, if I have a car outside, I have to protect myself and have to protect my parents. It is important to feel safer. The other thing is that whatever happens, I have my parents and my community that can help me, and I can help other people. And so, no matter what would happen and no matter if I lose more than other people, I know that I can help other people and other people can help me. So, I think what I learned by going there and talking with people is that our psychological models are fundamental to be implemented from a societal and community perspective. We have to insert community mechanisms inside psychological mechanisms and in the country.
Doherty: That's really great. I think people around the world listening can identify. This is the process that happens in Australia and in the United States and Italy. It's really impressive that you've been able to start to create a structure for this and interpret these events for people. We have to wrap up soon, but it's such a challenge to raise people's consciousness about these issues, knowing that it could make people sad or angry and speak truth about politics and then also try to salvage some positive feelings and recognize the positive feelings too. So, it's really impressive all the work that you're doing. It just validates everything that I've been studying and seeing around the world.
Pihkala: Yeah, I totally agree and feel grateful for the work you are doing. And as so often happens in this podcast, there could be a lot more to talk about, but we are running out of time for the episode. And we will, as usual, post links in the show notes to Matteo's work and the Italian Climate Anxiety Association. They also have a forthcoming book in English which should come out late this year. Some of that work around different climate emotions are featured in that one. So, there will be more opportunities for English speakers to engage with these topics. A lot of gratitude to you Matteo for joining us and sharing those experiences and wisdom.
Innocenti: Thank you for inviting me and it has been a pleasure and thank you for your work and this podcast and to give researchers from all over the world the opportunity to share with you their story and their work. I hope to see you again. Thank you so much.
Doherty: Yeah, and I want to recognize your grandfather and just our elders because I was just writing in my book project, this is all a legacy. We're just continuing the legacy of people that came before us and we'll do what little we can in our lives and then other people will take on the work. So, I just want to recognize that as well. We can only do what we can in our one lifetime but that's all we need to do is show up each day and do the best we can.
Listeners, I hope you enjoyed hearing from yet another part of the world. We're going to have a couple other guests coming from Italy as well. And so, we have a little bit of an Italian focus here on the podcast. Maybe another time we can talk about the beautiful parts of Italian environmental identity and connection with nature, connection with the land, food, family, all the positive things people associate with the Italian culture as well. Well, Matteo and Panu, you both take care of yourselves. Have a good evening and listeners and everyone, be well. Take care.
Pihkala: Take care.
[music: “CC&H theme music”]
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