Antarcticness: The Southernmost Continent and Psychology

Nature, as is frequently explained, can give plenty of support to our mental health and wellbeing. Does this include a wilderness to which few can travel: the coldest, driest, highest, remotest, and possibly most dangerous continent, Antarctica?

Looking south to Antarctica across the ocean's wilds.

Source: Ilan Kelman

To try to answer aspects of this question, I edited the book Antarcticness: Inspirations and imaginaries, published last week. What impacts on mental health and wellbeing emerge from learning about the wilderness and wildness of the southernmost ice?

Antarctica challenging mental health and wellbeing

The superlative epithets describing Antarctica tend towards negative connotations. Antarctica can kill in so many ways, including hypothermia, dehydration, elevation, lack of rescue and medical options, and physical trauma from falling into crevasses or from being hit by ice and snow falls and slides—as well as drowning.

While many people thrive amid such dangers, enjoying being tested to their limits, others fear the loss of safety and control. No matter how thoroughly we prepare and plan, Antarctica’s environment must control us and dictate our mental and physical security.

In April 1961, the only doctor at a new Soviet Antarctica base realized he had acute appendicitis. Non-invasive treatments were unsuccessful and evacuation was impossible, so he was forced to perform an auto-appendicectomy: an operation to remove his own appendix.

During the depths of winter in 1999, with access impossible for several months, the South Pole station’s only doctor diagnosed herself with cancer. Treatment supplies were airdropped and a perilous spring landing and takeoff, the earliest ever, eventually evacuated her.

For these individuals, and those around them knowing that their medical practitioner was in lethal danger, mental robustness helps everyone manage. Those who understandably would not wish to meet such situations head-on would not travel so far south, especially not to overwinter.

Even in mid-summer, swift medical support is not guaranteed. In December 2020, a sick man was evacuated from an Australian Antarctic station in a five-day, three-country operation involving ships, airplanes, and helicopters. It was faster than expected due to the fortuitous presence of an icebreaker (relatively) nearby.

For those who do undertake the voyage south, patience and caution assist in returning from Antarctica alive. The continent proffers few second chances.

More broadly, even those not going to Antarctica experience mental health and wellbeing challenges from doom-laden reporting about human-caused climate change. If the ice sheets melt, raising sea levels dozens of meters over centuries, how much will humanity suffer when reconfiguring coastal megacities? Could long-frozen microbes be released, making the COVID-19 pandemic a minor prelude to real disease devastation? How threatened are iconic animals, namely penguins, seals, and whales?

These concerns are legitimate and we are wreaking significant changes on the southernmost continent and the world. Descending into “eco-anxiety” and “climate grief” is a pathway to mental health and wellbeing difficulties. Aside from the alternative of what we can do through eco-inspiration, we can also draw on Antarcticness to support our mental health and wellbeing.

How Antarctica can support mental health and wellbeing

By constructing an Antarctic identity for humanity, the continent is brought to the vast population who is interested in it, but who would rarely have options to experience it directly. Through art, science, and politics, Antarctica can support mental health and wellbeing.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel Antarctica inspires in its future visions of humanity making the continent meaningful for everyone—compared to John Calvin Batchelor’s dystopia in The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica. While reading them, what better music to listen to than the melodious imaginations in the Antarctic compositions of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Carl Wittrock? Followed by watching the Antarctic scenes in the “Happy Feet” and “Madagascar” movies.

Nature-related themes supporting mental health and wellbeing—rightly or wrongly associated with Antarctica—include being pure, unspoiled, wild, and pristine. And, rightly associated, unparalleled beauty.

The sleek elegance of penguins in water compared to their waddling silliness on land. Majestic, sculpted icebergs towering over the tourist-filled boats as the berg’s mass plunges through the chilly depths. The crackling melody of sea ice, beckoning the unwary trekker to gamble on it not giving way. All providing data to teach us about our world.

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Antarctica’s colorlessness and iciness are comforting in being so alien. The place is part of our planet, it is swiftly changing due to our activities, and we can learn how we must act to move forward positively and to be positive about moving forward.

We can also be inspired by the imagination used to make Antarctica off-limits, for now, to resource exploration and extraction, military activities, and sovereignty. The Antarctic Treaty System, born in 1959, is a unique international agreement keeping the areas south of 60°S for all the planet and all of humanity.

It, perhaps, embodies Antarcticness.

A continent of contrasts

So Antarctica induces fear in being mercilessly untamed and comfort in being coldly placid. It is terrifyingly contaminated by the human-caused global temperature rise and has shown us stratospheric ozone depletion, yet it remains almost untouched by the prohibited human foibles.

The duality is Antarctica nearing human ideals while remaining inaccessible to most. Support and apprehension overlap, reinforcing each other in opposition.

If we could reconcile these meanings of Antarcticness, then we would be a long way toward understanding and accepting the psychologies of the southernmost continent. And we will understand better how to apply Antarctica to supporting rather than inhibiting our mental health and wellbeing.