A litany of universalizing diagnostic concepts have been coined to theorize the psychic effects of ecological destruction and climate change in the age of the Anthropocene, including ‘eco-anxiety,’ ‘ecological grief,’ ‘climate trauma,’ and ‘solastalgia’. However, the rootedness of these theories in Western biomedicine means that such concepts hold problematic assumptions about distinctions of ‘mind’ and body’; ‘inside’ and ‘outside’; ‘nature’ and ‘culture’. An exploration of the ecological distress articulated by Gaddi tribal men – who formerly practiced agro-pastoralism at the foothills of the Indian Himalayas – yields an emic theory that troubles these modernist assumptions. This paper attempts to learn from such emic theories generated by those most affected by ecological destruction to critique ecological changes and their psychic effects. It argues that such theories offer a powerful praxis of self-determination, if understood against wider histories of coloniality and dispossession, and more proximate micropolitical struggles.

Speaker: 

Nikita is a Reader in Anthropology, and the Co-director of the new Research England funded Centre for Anthropology and Mental Health Research in Action (CAMHRA). She researches and provides policy advisory on mental health, care, and inequality.  Her writing has appeared in venues such as the BMJ Global Health, MAQ and the JRAI. Her forthcoming manuscript, titled ‘Tension: Following mental distress in the Western Himalayas’ will be published in 2026 in Duke University Press’ Critical Global Health series. Nikita is currently a program of research focused on the histories and politics of environ-mental distress with collaborators in the UK, India and Australia. She is a fellow at the University of Sydney Policy Lab.