Law is about evidence, but it is also about language. When a new word enters public consciousness, it often signals a shift in what courts, clients, and communities will soon be forced to reckon with. One such word is solastalgia, a word born from loss, writes Rebecca Ward, MBA.
Coined by Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht in 2003, solastalgia describes the distress people feel when their home environment changes around them in harmful ways. Unlike nostalgia, where comfort is restored by returning home, solastalgia arises because home itself has changed. It is the unease of watching the familiar become foreign. And in Australia, it is moving from philosophy into law.
From theory to lived reality
Rural Australians know this instinctively. Drought, bushfires, floods, and now relentless smoke have become features of everyday life. Morrissey and Reser wrote almost two decades ago that drought in rural communities was already a slow-moving natural disaster with well-documented mental health consequences. That warning has only deepened.
The 2019–2020 Black Summer bushfires demonstrated this on a national scale. A Deakin-led survey of over 5,000 Australians found that one in four people directly affected met screening criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Younger Australians and women were particularly vulnerable. For many, the trauma was not confined to the fireground. The aftermath, persistent smoke, school closures, and weeks of confinement, produced depression, anxiety, and isolation.
These are not “soft” harms. They are real, measurable, and increasingly litigated.
The evidence base is building
A recent BMJ Mental Health scoping review analysed 19 studies from Australia, Germany, Peru, and the United States. Across more than 5,000 participants, solastalgia was consistently linked to depression, anxiety, PTSD, and somatisation. Indigenous communities, particularly in Australia and Canada, were highlighted as disproportionately affected, given their deep place-based connections.
What matters for the legal profession is not just that solastalgia exists, but that it is measurable. Tools such as the Environmental Distress Scale, the Scale of Solastalgia, and the Brief Solastalgia Scale now allow researchers, and potentially litigants, to quantify distress. Once a phenomenon can be measured, it can be claimed.
Negligence and foreseeability
For lawyers, the concept of foreseeability is central. Courts routinely ask whether harm was reasonably predictable. With the evidence now clear that environmental change produces measurable psychological harm, defendants, from developers to governments, may soon find solastalgia claims attached to negligence actions. The question will not be whether the harm was physical, but whether it was foreseeable that ongoing environmental degradation would produce psychiatric injury.
Class actions and environmental litigation
Australia has already seen class actions arising from environmental damage, including contaminated land and toxic emissions. As the psychological vocabulary expands, claimants may argue not only for economic and physical loss but also for the emotional devastation of watching their environment being destroyed. Solastalgia reframes loss not as a statistic, but as a lived erosion of belonging. It provides a framing that is culturally resonant and, increasingly, scientifically defensible.
Criminal and coronial contexts
In criminal law, disaster-related trauma has long been relevant to sentencing, mitigation, and coronial findings. Solastalgia adds nuance. It reframes the harm not as a one-off shock but as a chronic erosion of mental health from living through recurring disaster seasons.
For coroners, this may affect findings on suicide where environmental despair plays a role. For defence lawyers, it may shape arguments about diminished capacity in communities repeatedly struck by climate crises.
Employment and WHS obligations
Employers in rural and resource-based industries already carry obligations under the Work Health and Safety Act to manage psychosocial hazards. If solastalgia becomes recognised as a legitimate source of workplace stress, particularly for farmers, emergency responders, or communities living under prolonged smoke, failure to mitigate could attract liability.
For employment lawyers, this will not be theoretical. It will appear in claims, in defences, and in the fine print of the duty of care.
The professional responsibility
The legal profession is both advocate and participant. Lawyers practising in rural areas may themselves be living with solastalgia, watching drought strip towns bare or smoke choke valleys. The line between professional and personal exposure is thin.
The challenge is to move beyond viewing climate change as a regulatory or environmental law issue. It is a mental health and justice issue. Clients experiencing solastalgia may present in family disputes, succession matters, compensation claims, or criminal trials. Recognising the language of distress is not sentimental; it is part of competent practice.
What comes next?
Critics might say that solastalgia is not a diagnosis, and that is true. It is not in the DSM or ICD. But that does not render it irrelevant. Grief is not a diagnosis either, yet courts accept it as evidence of harm.
Solastalgia is best understood as a stressor, a pathway to anxiety, depression, and PTSD, intensified by environmental change. Research suggests that interventions matter. Cognitive-behavioural therapies can help. Social connection and community mobilisation against climate threats provide resilience.
But perhaps most importantly, giving people a word for their distress legitimises their experience. For courts, that means testimony framed not as vague malaise but as a recognised phenomenon with a growing evidence base.
Conclusion
Law is often slow to catch up with language. But when it does, the consequences are profound. “Sexual harassment” was once a novel phrase. “Workplace bullying” was once dismissed as a personality clash. Both are now central to legal practice. Solastalgia may be next.
The land is changing. The climate is shifting. Australians are feeling it not just in their lungs and wallets, but in their minds.
For lawyers, recognising solastalgia is not about embracing new-age terminology. It is about acknowledging harm, anticipating claims, and ensuring justice reflects reality.
The question is not whether solastalgia will enter the courtroom. The question is whether the legal profession will be ready when it does.
Rebecca Ward is an MBA-qualified management consultant with a focus on mental health. She is the managing director of Barristers’ Health, which supports the legal profession through management consulting and psychotherapy. Barristers’ Health was founded in memory of her brother, Steven Ward, LLB.
