The relationship between future anxiety and global climate change awareness among physiotherapy students in Turkey: a cross-sectional study.

backgroundThe climate crisis is not just an environmental issue; it's a profound public health emergency that is deeply affecting the mental well-being of young people, leading to widespread eco-anxiety. As the future frontline of healthcare, physiotherapy students will inevitably have to manage the health consequences of climate change. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how prepared they are specifically, how their own awareness of the crisis connects with their anxiety about the future. This exploratory study aimed to provide preliminary findings on the relationship between global climate change awareness and future anxiety among physiotherapy students in Turkey.

methodsWe conducted a cross-sectional study with 394 physiotherapy students (mean age 21.3 ± 3.0; 74.6% female) from the state universities. Using an online survey, we gathered data on their demographic and social characteristics, along with their scores on two validated scales: the Awareness Scale of University Students About Global Climate Change (ASUSGCC) and the Future Anxiety Scale for University Students (FASUS). We analyzed the data using Pearson correlation to examine the relationship between climate change awareness and future anxiety, and univariable linear regression analyses to explore factors associated with climate change awareness.

resultsOverall, students reported a moderate level of climate change awareness (ASUSGCC mean: 3.4 ± 0.7) and a notable level of future anxiety (FASUS mean: 61.6 ± 8.6). We found a statistically significant, positive, but weak correlation between total climate awareness and total future anxiety (r = 0.168, p < 0.01). The regression analyses showed that several variables were statistically associated with higher awareness scores, although the explained variance was low. Female gender (β = 0.273, p = 0.001), environmental volunteering (β = 0.180, p = 0.019), and more frequent use of social media for climate-related information (β = 0.167, p = 0.001) were associated with higher climate change awareness. Higher total future anxiety was weakly but statistically significantly associated with higher awareness scores (β = 0.013, p = 0.001). In subscale-level analyses, Future Fear was also weakly associated with awareness (β = 0.009, p = 0.015). Previous environmental training was not significantly associated with climate change awareness (p = 0.466).

conclusionsAmong physiotherapy students, climate change awareness was weakly but statistically significantly associated with future anxiety. Environmental volunteering and more frequent exposure to climate-related content on social media were also associated with higher awareness scores, whereas previous environmental training was not significantly associated with awareness. However, given the cross-sectional design and possible self-selection into volunteering, these findings should be interpreted as associations rather than evidence that volunteering increases awareness. Future longitudinal or intervention-based studies are needed to examine whether structured environmental engagement can improve climate literacy in physiotherapy education.