Caleb Bond:
Now you know as well as I, that kids are having their minds filled with left wing talking points by activists masquerading as teachers. Not all teachers, but there’s enough of it going on to be a problem. And we see it in gender ideology and we know it’s happening with climate change because kids are going to psychologists saying that they’re anxious about the future of the planet and it’s causing them real stress in their day-to-day lives. We call it climate anxiety. Now if you’re a regular Sky viewer, you’d probably be familiar with educational and developmental psychologist Claire Rowe. She sees these kids. She’s also an adjunct fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs and she recently wrote a report that said, “Emerging treatments to climate anxiety often involve emotional immersion, validate existing fears, discourage reassurance, and promote activism or collective action as coping strategies.”
It said, “In clinical terms, fear is affirmed rather than examined. Distress is sustained rather than contained, and emotional intensity is reframed as a moral virtue.” Well, now a group of more than 300 climate and mental health organisations, scientists, psychologists, and a bunch of other people have signed an open letter which criticises that research saying that actually this climate anxiety is not a pathological anxiety at all. It’s caused, “By failing to hear, validate, and respond to real fears, grief, uncertainty, and loss of hope that young people have already experienced.” In other words, it’s justified and it shouldn’t be treated.
And on this list of signatories are the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. Now, these are large medical representative bodies that are saying that kids should be anxious about the climate. Claire Rowe joins me now. Claire, what do you make of these claims? And I’m reading from the open letter here. It says, “We reject that climate science and support are causing climate distress. The evidence points to real world climate impacts not education as the primary driver of distress.” I mean, what real world impacts are the kids feeling? What, they go outside and it’s a degree hotter than it was a year ago?
Clare Rowe:
Yeah. Well, exactly. Thank you, Caleb. As you raise, I think it’s a very interesting argument that these groups have decided to put forward. They’ve essentially said, like you’ve pointed out that no, kids who are experiencing distress in relation to what they’re learning at school about climate change aren’t experiencing an anxiety condition. The climate council themselves have used the term climate anxiety for many years in order to support their arguments of continued climate education. So in my mind, they seem to be now walking that back and saying, no, no, no, this is normal distress to a real world event according to them. But the thing is as clinicians when we assess what constitutes an anxiety or a pathological condition, it doesn’t matter whether it’s in response to a real world event or not. What we look at is the impairment on someone’s functioning.
And what I and other colleagues are seeing are very young children. We’re not talking about teenagers, we’re talking about six and seven year olds who are having problems sleeping, they’re having problems eating, they’re ruminating, they don’t want to go to school. They are experiencing all the symptoms of a clinical anxiety disorder.
Caleb Bond:
So why then-
Clare Rowe:
I think it’s very convenient for these groups now to say, no, it’s not.
Caleb Bond:
So why then would professionals push back against that and say that’s something that doesn’t need to be treated? I mean, surely you don’t leave a kid to have those kinds of experiences.
Clare Rowe:
Well, exactly. And my report with the IPA was making that point that we have a very robust evidence base of how we treat anxiety in children and adults. And suddenly that seems to go out the window for us as psychologists when we are advised by bodies like these ones like the Australian Psychological Society of how we should address this with children. Suddenly we’re supposed to validate these concerns and say, oh no, well, this is a normal response, rather than do what we would do with other phobias and anxieties, which is to challenge some of their catastrophic thinking. So I think these groups like the Royal College of Psychiatry and GPs have kind of gotten themselves tangled in knots here because of course they want to say that children should be talking about climate change, but of course their first remit is to reduce mental health conditions and improve mental health.
So if the evidence shows that it’s creating anxiety disorders, then suddenly they’re backtracking from that saying, no, no, no, it’s not an anxiety disorder. I mean, I always feel like I’m being gaslit at this point in time in a world, I think that overpathologizes a lot of emotional distress in children and I’m seeing a genuine emotional distress and told that it’s all normal.
Caleb Bond:
I’ve only got 30 seconds because we’re pushing up against the break, but would you say these organisations that have signed up to this, including the Black Dog Institute and other big mental health bodies, that they’re abrogating their responsibility by saying this is something that doesn’t need to be dealt with?
Clare Rowe:
Well, I absolutely would say that and I think that they need to meet me with the debate I’m having, which is a debate very, very rooted in developmental science and the psychology of what a six, seven, eight year old can handle. This is not a debate about climate change, about energy policies. This is a debate about developmental psychologies and yes, they are absolutely abandoning their responsibility to children’s mental health in my opinion.
Caleb Bond:
Well said, Claire Rowe, thank you as always.
This transcript of Clare Rowe speaking on The Bond Report Sky News Australia from 29 May 2026 has been edited for clarity.
