In 2003, Australian environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht coined a word to describe this suffering: solastalgia. A cross between "solace" and "nostalgia," it names the pain of being homesick while still at home, because the place itself has transformed. The concept was born in Australia's Hunter Valley, where residents watched their landscape being devoured by coal mines. Twenty years later, it is appearing in the most prestigious medical journals—and resonating far beyond mining valleys.
A concept entering hard science
For a long time, solastalgia remained a philosophical concept, discussed in eco-psychology and humanities circles. This is no longer the case. In 2025, two major publications changed the game.
The first, a systematic review published in BMJ Mental Health by Vela Sandquist and colleagues from the University of Zurich, screened 80 studies containing the term "solastalgia." Of the five quantitative studies selected according to strict criteria, all showed positive correlations between solastalgia and mental health disorders: depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, somatization. Fourteen additional quantitative and qualitative studies confirmed this direction.
The second, published in Nature Mental Health by Marques and Franco, goes further. The researchers suggest that solastalgia could act as an "early warning signal" for psychological disorders related to environmental change. Not just another symptom, but an indicator—a marker of distress that precedes more established pathologies.
The nuance is important. The empirical basis remains modest: five rigorous quantitative studies at the heart of the review. The concept is promising, and evidence is accumulating, but it is not yet massive. This is what makes the subject relevant now: research is shifting from qualitative to quantitative.
France, a silent case study
While solastalgia originated in Australia, France offers a large-scale observation ground. The country consumes between 20,000 and 30,000 hectares of natural, agricultural, and forest areas each year—the equivalent of five football fields per hour, according to data from Cerema and the Ministry of Ecology. The artificialized surface of the territory continues to grow, even if the pace is slowing compared to the 2010s.
The 2021 Climate and Resilience Law set an ambitious goal: "zero net artificialization" (ZAN) by 2050, with an intermediate target in 2031—to halve the rate of land consumption. The TRACE bill, adopted by the Senate on March 18, 2025, seeks to reconcile this objective with the realities faced by local elected officials. Numbers and laws speak of land. No one talks about what those who see these lands change beneath their feet feel.
Artificialization is not just about biodiversity and groundwater. When a field on the edge of a village becomes a commercial zone, when a dirt road disappears under asphalt, when a familiar horizon is bristling with new roofs—it is the intimate relationship of residents with their environment that is fractured. The solastalgia of slow urbanization is less spectacular than that of Australian mines. Yet it affects millions of people.
The gentrification of city centers produces a comparable effect. Long-time residents of Belleville, Croix-Rousse, or Le Panier in Marseille often describe the same feeling: the neighborhood still exists on the map, but the atmosphere—the shops, the faces, the sounds, the smells—has changed to the point of becoming unrecognizable. Urban solastalgia is emotional gentrification: the displacement is not physical, but internal.
It's not eco-anxiety
The distinction with eco-anxiety is fundamental and often misunderstood. Eco-anxiety is a diffuse, future-oriented dread, linked to past, present, and future climate disasters. It does not need a specific place to manifest itself. Solastalgia, on the contrary, is rooted in a lived territory. It is caused by the concrete transformation of a familiar environment—a past or ongoing event, not a projection.
Albrecht insists on this temporal and spatial dimension: solastalgia is distress felt in the present, caused by the degradation of a familiar environment, without having left that place. The empirical research of 2025 confirms that solastalgia is more intense in scenarios of progressive environmental destruction—such as urban sprawl or coastal erosion—than in isolated events.
Farmers facing the artificialization of their land are among the most exposed. Residents of coastal areas eroded by rising waters are also affected. Solastalgia also touches long-time residents of neighborhoods transformed by urban renewal or gentrification—a population rarely considered in environmental studies.
Naming to begin healing
In October 2024, the Ministry of Ecology organized a webinar including solastalgia in its reflections on eco-anxiety and emotional resilience—a sign that the concept is permeating French institutions. In the United Kingdom, the NHS has gone a step further with its "green social prescribing" program: prescriptions for reconnecting with nature for patients suffering from environmental distress, with over 8,500 referrals recorded. France has no equivalent.
Research published in People and Nature (Rafa, 2025) emphasizes the necessary triple response: integrating solastalgia into mental health programs, into environmental impact assessments, and into community resilience planning. Naming a suffering is the first step to treating it. For centuries, homesickness was considered a weakness of character. Solastalgia risks the same fate if it is not taken seriously.
France consumes five football fields per hour. For each of these fields, a familiar landscape disappears, a horizon closes, an invisible link stretches between inhabitants and the place that built them. The land now has its law. The emotions of those who live there are still waiting for theirs.
Sources
1. Albrecht, G. — Solastalgia: the distress caused by environmental change, Australasian Psychiatry (2007)
2. Vela Sandquist et al. — Is solastalgia associated with mental health problems? A scoping review, BMJ Mental Health (2025)
3. Marques, L. & Franco, A. — Solastalgia as a warning sign for mental health in a changing environment, Nature Mental Health (2025)
4. Rafa, M. — Empirical research review on Solastalgia: Place, people and policy pathways, People and Nature (2025)
5. Ministère de l'Écologie — Portail de l'artificialisation des sols (artificialisation.developpement-durable.gouv.fr)
6. Loi Climat et Résilience n° 2021-1104 du 22 août 2021
7. Sénat — Proposition de loi TRACE, adoptée le 18 mars 2025
8. Ministère de l'Écologie — Webinaire « Les Mots des transitions » Cycle 2, 14 octobre 2024
9. NHS England — Green Social Prescribing programme (england.nhs.uk)
10. Oxfam France — Solastalgie et éco-anxiété : définitions et explications (2024)
