Eco-anxiety and the influence of climate change on future planning is greater for young US residents with direct exposure to climate impacts

Abstract Awareness of the threats of climate change is engendering distress in increasingly documented ways, with young people particularly affected. Experiences such as climate distress and eco-anxiety have implications for the health and wellbeing of societies, economies, and for climate action, including mental health, agency to address the crisis, and future planning. While multi-country studies suggest that eco-anxiety and related experiences of distress may vary with context, the hypothesis that exposure to climate-related impacts increases eco-anxiety and associated psychological impacts is underexplored in youth at the individual level. Here we show that in a large sample of US youth (aged 16–24, n = 2834), self-reported direct experience of climate-related events significantly increased eco-anxiety, climate distress and the impact of climate change on future planning, but also psychological adaptation, meaning-focused coping and climate agency. As the climate crisis accelerates and exposure to climate-related hazards increases, these findings have important implications for the mental health of populations, life choices that have socioeconomic impact, and climate behaviours of the growing group of young people experiencing these threats.