Climate anxiety in perspective: a look at dominant stressors in youth mental health and sleep

Ogunbode, CA, Player, L, Lu, S, Park, MS ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1269-6856 and Doran, R, 2025. Climate anxiety in perspective: a look at dominant stressors in youth mental health and sleep. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. ISSN 0077-8923

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Abstract

There is growing evidence that climate anxiety is associated with significant effects on the mental health and wellbeing of young people. However, the relative importance of climate anxiety for young people's mental health has hitherto been unclear, as climate anxiety has largely been studied in isolation from other common stressors. This study sought to contextualize the significance of climate anxiety for the mental health of UK young adults relative to other concurrent psychological stressors. We surveyed university students (N = 461) and a general population sample aged 18–25 (N = 400). The results showed that while climate anxiety was significantly associated with poorer mental health and worse insomnia when examined alone, this association became nonsignificant or greatly diminished when other stressors were considered. Loneliness was found to be the most important predictor of mental health, and financial anxiety the most important predictor of insomnia severity. The findings suggest that climate anxiety, while concerning, may not be an especially dominant factor in young people's mental health. Our research highlights the need to consider the broader context of young people's lives, and the complex interplay of various psychological stressors, in efforts to map pathways between climate change and mental health.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
Creators:	Ogunbode, C.A., Player, L., Lu, S., Park, M.S. and Doran, R.
Publisher:	Wiley
Date:	15 September 2025
ISSN:	0077-8923
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1111/nyas.70057 DOI 2513833 Other
Rights:	© 2025 the author(s). Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The New York Academy of Sciences. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	21 Oct 2025 16:43
Last Modified:	21 Oct 2025 16:43
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/54600

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