Climate anxiety and generalized anxiety are distinct, new research shows

A recent study published in the British Journal of Health Psychology has provided new insights into how climate anxiety relates to generalized anxiety and common health behaviors. Contrary to what might be expected, the study found that fluctuations in an individual’s climate anxiety did not correspond with changes in generalized anxiety or most health behaviors such as sleep quality, diet, or physical activity. The study highlights that climate anxiety is distinct from generalized anxiety, providing a clearer understanding of how people experience worry about climate change.

As awareness of climate change grows, so does concern about its psychological impacts, particularly climate anxiety, which refers to the fear and worry individuals may feel about the future of the environment. Past studies have primarily focused on the association between climate anxiety and mental health issues, such as generalized anxiety. However, there has been little research examining how climate anxiety interacts with health behaviors like sleep, diet, and physical activity, which are critical for overall well-being.

Generalized anxiety, a common mental health condition, has been linked to various negative health behaviors, such as poor sleep, lower physical activity, and higher alcohol consumption. Given this, researchers hypothesized that climate anxiety might similarly affect health behaviors, either directly or indirectly through its association with generalized anxiety.

“Climate anxiety seems to be a motivator of at least some kinds of sustainable behavior, but we don’t know much about its associations with impairing levels of anxiety or physical health. This paper helps us to answer these questions,” said study author Marc Williams, a clinical psychologist and lecturer at Cardiff University.

The researchers used a longitudinal design to gather data over a year. A group of 204 participants from northern Spain, all of whom were part of a larger study on mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic, participated. Participants ranged in age from 44 to 70 years, with an average age of 55.

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Most participants completed at least 20 assessments over the course of the study. These assessments were conducted every two weeks via a smartphone app and covered a variety of topics, including climate anxiety, generalized anxiety, and several health behaviors such as sleep quality, physical activity, alcohol consumption, diet, and screen time.

Climate anxiety was measured with a single question asking how anxious participants felt about climate change on a scale from 0 to 10, while generalized anxiety was measured using the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 2-item scale, which assessed how often participants felt anxious or worried over the past two weeks. Health behaviors were measured with simple, validated questions. For example, sleep quality was rated on a scale from 0 to 10, and physical activity was assessed by asking participants how many days per week they engaged in at least 30 minutes of activity that increased their breathing rate.

The study used a network analysis approach, which allowed researchers to examine both between-person and within-person variations in the relationships between climate anxiety, generalized anxiety, and health behaviors. By analyzing data at both levels, the researchers could see how individual fluctuations in anxiety and health behaviors related to one another over time.

The researchers found no significant relationship between climate anxiety and generalized anxiety, suggesting that these are distinct emotional experiences. While it might seem intuitive that people who are more anxious about climate change would also exhibit higher levels of generalized anxiety, this was not the case in the study’s sample.

Second, climate anxiety did not appear to have a significant impact on most health behaviors. There was no consistent association between climate anxiety and behaviors like physical activity, sleep quality, diet, or screen time. This suggests that feeling anxious about climate change does not necessarily lead to changes in how people engage with these behaviors.

“The tendency to experience anxiety in relation to climate change, as well as an individual’s fluctuations in this experience, don’t relate to a general tendency to worry, or to a range of health behaviors such as sleeping well and eating a healthy diet,” Williams told PsyPost.

However, the study did find a notable exception: at the within-person level, individuals reported higher alcohol consumption during periods when they also reported higher levels of climate anxiety. This suggests that, at times, individuals may use alcohol as a coping mechanism in response to climate-related worries, though this finding was not robust across all analyses. Notably, the link between climate anxiety and alcohol consumption was strongest among younger participants and those with higher levels of generalized anxiety.

Generalized anxiety, on the other hand, was associated with several health behaviors. Participants with higher levels of generalized anxiety reported poorer sleep quality and less healthy diets, which aligns with previous research linking anxiety to negative health outcomes. There was also a relationship between generalized anxiety and lower physical activity, particularly among older participants.

“We were surprised to find the lack of association between climate anxiety and generalized anxiety, as other papers have tended to find this,” Williams said. “However, our measure of climate anxiety focuses very specifically on anxiety about climate change, and doesn’t measure whether this gets in the way of someone’s functioning.”

“Our measure of generalized anxiety did measure the effects of anxiety on functioning, in particular, whether someone feels they worry uncontrollably. Interestingly, papers that have found a positive association between climate anxiety and generalized anxiety use a measure of climate anxiety that includes an element of impaired functioning, so this might explain why these studies find an association between climate anxiety and generalized anxiety, whereas we do not.”

The use of single-item measures for climate anxiety and health behaviors may not have captured the full complexity of these experiences. Future research could use more comprehensive measures to assess the broader impact of climate anxiety.

“We used very brief, sometimes single-item questionnaires in our study — this was to make it feasible for respondents to complete multiple times over several weeks, but it makes it harder to verify the reliability/validity of some of these measures,” Williams explained.

The long-term goals for this line of research are “to understand how climate anxiety is associated with a range of behaviors that are good for both people and the planet, and to understand how climate anxiety can be mobilized to encourage these behaviors in a way that doesn’t cause harm,” Williams said.

The study, “Climate anxiety and its association with health behaviours and generalized anxiety: An intensive longitudinal study,” was authored by Marc O. Williams, Joren Buekers, Gemma Castaño-Vinyals, Rafael de Cid, Laura Delgado-Ortiz, Ana Espinosa, Judith Garcia-Aymerich, Sarah Koch, Manolis Kogevinas, Marco Viola, Lorraine Whitmarsh, and Guillaume Chevance.