Drought, worry, and preparing for the future: The ethnopsychology of climate distress in Kilifi County, Kenya

Abstract

The impacts of climate change in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) presents a chronic and intensifying disaster, with drought, flooding, and extreme heat, presenting unique challenges and profound disruptions. Growing evidence links such events to ecological grief, ecological anxiety, and solastalgia – negative affective states that reflects responses to climate change related destruction of nature, species, culturally significant or sacred spaces, and other ways of life. While this literature is expanding in the Global North, little is known about how communities in SSA perceive and respond to deteriorating or depleting natural ecosystems. This article explores the ethnopsychology of distress precipitated by environmental stressors and its local conceptualization amongst residents of Kilifi County, Kenya. We interviewed 30 community members to investigate how experiences of drought, flooding and other ecological changes are linked to mental health, physical health as well as socio-cultural lives. Given the intimate ties between people and their natural environments, climatic shocks disrupted not only livelihoods but also cultural and spiritual connections to land. Participants described feelings of distress, loss of identity, hopelessness, depression, and anxiety – often associated with economic pressures such as food insecurity. With sweeping and swiftly changing ecological symptoms, our findings underscore the need to situate ecological change at the center of mental and public health discussions. Despite the hardships, our interlocutors suggested that resilience may occur in the small measures such as planting drought resistant crops, drilling more boreholes and storing food strategically for future droughts to stave off hunger, fear, and grief. Coping strategies ranged from adaptive (communal support, food storage, religious practices) to maladaptive (substance use, labor migration), highlighting the urgent need for psychosocial and structural support in ecologically vulnerable settings.