A meta-analysis on the relationship between climate anxiety and wellbeing

Abstract

Climate anxiety refers to the negative emotional reactions that a person can experience in response to climate change irrespective of prior direct experience with it. Research suggests this emotional reaction ranges from successful coping and adaptation to clinical-level psychological impairment. The Climate Change Anxiety Scale (CCAS) was designed to measure a person's level of climate anxiety impairment. However, inconsistent results when testing the relationship between CCAS scores and psychological wellbeing measures have raised questions about the scale's validity and usefulness for assessing climate change's mental health impacts. Our goal was to quantitatively summarise the direction and strength of the correlations between climate anxiety (as indexed by the CCAS) and measures of psychological wellbeing. We identified 25 studies and 60 effect sizes for inclusion, and meta-analytic results indicated a moderate negative correlation between overall CCAS scores and psychological wellbeing (r = −0.296, 95% CI [-0.360; −0.230], p < .001). The meta-analytic estimates were consistent across CCAS subscales and diagnosis-specific measures of wellbeing. Multilevel meta-regressions used to estimate the influence of potential moderators indicated that the correlations were stronger when the sample's mean level of environmental identity was higher, and when a measure indicative of mental unwellness was used. We discuss implications for the nature of the relationship between climate anxiety and psychological wellbeing in general, and for the use of the CCAS in clinical and broader contexts.