Understanding Eco-anxiety: A Systematic Scoping Review of Current Literature and Identified Knowledge Gaps

• Main Authors: Yumiko Coffey (Author), Navjot Bhullar (Author), Joanne Durkin (Author), Md Shahidul Islam (Author), Kim Usher (Author)
• Format: Book
• Published: Elsevier, 2021-08-01T00:00:00Z.
• Subjects: article
• Online Access: Connect to this object online.
• Notes: 2667-2782; 10.1016/j.joclim.2021.100047
• Keywords: Climate change; Eco-anxiety; Mental health; Climate anxiety; Scoping Review; Public aspects of medicine; RA1-1270; Meteorology. Climatology; QC851-999
• Source: The Journal of Climate Change and Health, Vol 3, Iss , Pp 100047- (2021)

Eco-anxiety is the distress caused by climate change where people are becoming anxious about their future. The present scoping reveiw critically evaluated and synthesized the scholarly literature on eco-anxiety and reported it using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR) [1]. The study aims were twofold: (i) to understand how eco-anxiety was operationalized in the existing literature, and (ii) the key characteristics of eco-anxiety. Our review found that further research is needed to provide conceptual clarity of the term eco-anxiety. We found that most of the evidence comes from the Western countries, and future research is needed in the non-Western countries. Indigenous peoples, children and young people, and those connected to the natural world are most impacted by eco-anxiety and are identified as vulnerable. We recommend employing diverse methodologies to better understand their lived experiences of eco-anxiety.