From negative feelings to impairments: A longitudinal study on the development of climate change anxiety.

Autor: Chan HW; The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China. Electronic address: william-hw.chan@polyu.edu.hk., Lin L; Lingnan University, Hong Kong, China., Tam KP; The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China., Hong YY; The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Journal of anxiety disorders [J Anxiety Disord] 2024 Aug 25; Vol. 107, pp. 102917. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Aug 25.
DOI: 10.1016/j.janxdis.2024.102917
Abstrakt: People may experience anxiety and related distress when they come in contact with climate change (i.e., climate change anxiety). Climate change anxiety can be conceptualized as either emotional-based response (the experience of anxiety-related emotions) or impairment-based response (the experience of impairment in daily functioning). To date, it remains uncertain how these distinct manifestations of climate change anxiety are related. Conceptually, the experience of climate change anxiety may transform from an adaptive and healthy emotional response to an impairment in daily functioning. We conducted two two-wave longitudinal studies to examine the possible bidirectional relationships between three manifestations of climate change anxiety. We recruited 942 adults (mean age = 43.1) and 683 parents (mean age = 46.2) in Studies 1 and 2, respectively. We found that Time 1 emotion-based response was positively linked to Time 2 cognitive-emotional impairment, while Time 1 cognitive-emotional impairment was positively related to Time 2 functional impairment. In Study 2, we also found a bidirectional positive relationship between generalized anxiety and emotion-based climate change anxiety over time. Overall, our findings provide initial support to the temporal relationships between different manifestations of climate change anxiety, corroborating that climate change anxiety may develop from emotional responses to impairment in functioning.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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