ArticleScientific reports2023
Introduction and behavioral validation of the climate change distress and impairment scale.
Article in Scientific reports, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Pooled it
- The relationship between climate change and mental health: a systematic review of the association between eco-anxiety, psychological distress, and symptoms of major affective disorders.BMC psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- One Health - One Planet - One Mind: integrating eco-anxiety into the One Health paradigm.One health (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2026Review
- Knowing what you feel matters: Emotion differentiation impacts climate-related attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.Journal of environmental psychology · 2026Article
- 'Taking the green pill': An interpretative phenomenological analysis of the lived experiences of climate distress.Psychology and psychotherapy · 2026Article
- Association between climate change awareness-related psychological distress and mental health in people with psychiatric diagnoses or subclinical symptoms: a scoping review.European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists · 2026Article
- Digital Training for Mental Health Promotion in Young People With Climate Change-Related Distress: Protocol for a Feasibility Randomized Controlled Trial.JMIR research protocols · 2025Article
- Development and Validation of the Climate Change Anxiety Scale-Short Form.Clinical neuropsychiatry · 2025Article
- Assessing the Presence of Eco-Anxiety in the General Population: A Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis and Meta-Regression.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Addressing youths' climate change-related distress: a qualitative study on the experience of burden, triggering and protective factors.BMJ mental health · 2025Article
- A COSMIN systematic review of the psychometric properties of instruments that measure climate change-related distress.Cogent mental health · 2025Review
- Toward a unified understanding of climate anxiety: Examining measures of climate and eco-anxiety.PloS one · 2025Article
- A Follow up on the Continuum Theory of Eco-Anxiety: Analysis of the Climate Change Anxiety Scale Using Item Response Theory among French Speaking Population.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Article
- Climate change distress and impairment in Germany.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Development and validation of a climate change version of the man-made disaster-related distress scale (CC-MMDS).The journal of climate change and healthArticle
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Governmental agencies and the medical and psychological professions are calling for a greater focus on the negative mental health effects of climate change (CC). As a first step, the field needs measures to distinguish affective/emotional distress due to CC from impairment that requires further scientific and diagnostic attention and that may require treatment in the future. To this end, we constructed the climate change distress and impairment scale, which distinguishes CC distress (spanning anger, anxiety, and sadness) from impairment. In four studies (N = 1699), we developed and validated English and German versions of the scale. Across samples, spanning 2021-2022, CC distress was at least moderate, while we observed general moderate to high levels of distress and low to moderate levels of impairment. In three English-speaking samples, younger individuals and women were most affected by CC distress, whereas this was not the case in a German-speaking sample, suggesting sociopolitical influencing factors. We demonstrate convergent validity with previous measures and discriminant validity for general negative affectivity and depressive and generalized anxiety disorder symptoms, which underlines that CC distress is not in itself pathological. Employing a fully incentivized social dilemma paradigm, we demonstrate that CC distress and (to a lesser degree) CC impairment predict pro-environmental behavior, underscoring them as possible drivers, and targets, of climate-change mitigation efforts.
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