Solastalgia

A few weeks ago I read in Wired magazine a piece on solastalgia, which is perhaps best described in the words of the term's coiner, Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht

"Solastalgia is the pain or sickness caused by the loss or lack of solace and the sense of desolation connected to the present state of one’s home and territory. It is the 'lived experience' of negative environmental change. It is the homesickness you have when you are still at home. It is that feeling you have when your sense of place is under attack. While I claim responsibility for creating the concept of solastalgia and its meaning, I am aware that that the existential experience underlying it is not new ... only that it is newly defined in English (but possibly represented in many other languages). The experience of solastalgia might well be ancient and ubiquitous and under the impact of relentless environmental change, ecosystem distress and climate chaos, it may well become much more common. It is my sincere hope that the negative experience of solastalgia can be overcome by the restoration of ecosystem and human health via every form of creative enterprise at our disposal."

Albrecht describes solastalgia as a psychoterratic illness, proposing two new categories of illness - psychoterratic and somatoterratic that make the connection between the environment and mental and physical health.

At first, when I read the Wired article, I was a bit sceptical - professionally I'm a minimalist, preferring that psychiatric entities not be multiplied unnecessarily (a pretentious way of saying I'm wary of medicalising and psychiatricising everyday experience.) However the more I read about Albrecht's concept - especially the underlying ideas of psychoterratic and somaterratic illness - the more compelling they are.

Aside from anything else, is this concept useful for considering the overall costs not only of climate change but of other environmental (in the widest sense) interventions?