Trauma in the Anthropocene: Reflecting on mental health at a time of ecological crisis

Speaker

ISA Visiting Fellow - Baptiste Brossard

Lecturer  University of York

The current environmental crisis challenges the very foundations of our economic, political, and social orders. Yet, discussions on the relationship between mental health and ecology often remain narrowly focused on the benefits of 'nature' for well-being and the rise of conditions like 'eco-anxiety.' I argue that such perspectives are reductive. Mental health, as understood in Western cultures—comprising a complex array of concepts, practices, institutions, and expertise attending to emotional and thinking experiences—encompasses far more than individual happiness: it is fundamentally about how emotions, ideals, and suffering are embodied and socially organised, creating socioecological forms of life. In this light, the ecological crisis should prompt us to reevaluate the core concepts that underlie contemporary mental health knowledge. To illustrate, I will focus on trauma, a concept which has become central to the Western understanding of distress and identity in recent decades. I will present some elements for a new, historical sociology of trauma, viewing it not merely as a psychiatric category but as a cultural relation to adversity. This approach will allow us to examine how environmental factors have been marginalised to the point where traumatic processes have come to be perceived as an individual—if not neurological—phenomenon, disconnected from socioecological contexts. This analysis will shed light on how human traumatic experiences have varied across historical s.