“If a child presented with any other form of anxiety, we would challenge their fears and build coping skills. Instead, in the case of climate anxiety, adults are affirming catastrophic thinking and encouraging emotional distress,”said Clare Rowe, educational and developmental psychologist and Adjunct Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs.
A new report, Evidence Over Ideology: Protect Children by Restoring Clinical Standards in Climate Anxiety Treatment, finds that children are being subjected to practices that would be considered clinically inappropriate in any other context.
The report has exposed a disturbing shift in how children’s anxiety is being treated, warning that so-called “climate anxiety” interventions are abandoning evidence-based psychology and replacing it with ideology.
The report reveals that decades of established treatment grounded in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) are being sidelined in favour of:
- emotional immersion
- fear validation
- activism as “therapy”
“In the case of climate anxiety, adults are affirming catastrophic thinking and encouraging emotional distress. This is not treatment. It is the institutionalisation of anxiety,” Rowe said.
The report warns that children are increasingly being positioned as responsible for solving global problems they cannot control – a practice that risks entrenching helplessness, not resilience.
“Children are being told the planet is in crisis and then asked to fix it,” Rowe said.
According to the report, this approach is particularly dangerous for younger children, who lack the cognitive capacity to understand abstract, long-term risks but are highly vulnerable to emotionally charged messaging.
The paper identifies a broader trend in which schools, psychologists, and professional bodies are blurring the line between care and activism, abandoning therapeutic neutrality in favour of political alignment.
“The consulting room and the classroom are not places for political advocacy,” Rowe said.
“They exist to protect and develop children, not mobilise them.”
The report warns this shift risks:
- reinforcing anxiety rather than reducing it
- normalising distress as a moral virtue
- undermining parental authority
- eroding trust in mental health professionals
In a foreword to the paper, Institute of Public Affairs Director of Education Programs Colleen Harkin says the report raises the prospect that clinicians who depart from evidence-based treatment may be exposing themselves to negligence claims, given the clear, established standards for treating childhood anxiety.
The report calls for:
- a return to evidence-based clinical practice
- removal of fear-based climate messaging in primary schools
- stronger regulatory oversight of practitioners
- proper evaluation of school-based programs
- restoration of parental authority in managing children’s distress
“Children’s mental health must never be sacrificed to political agendas,” Rowe said.
“We need to restore a simple principle: treat anxiety – don’t amplify it.”
To download the IPA’s research click here.
