Judy Wu, our doctoral student, won the ‘Best Oral Presentation’ award at the Annual Cascadia Symposium on Environmental, Occupational, and Population Health in Blaine, Washington.

Judy’s presentation, “Climate Concern and Eco-anxiety in BC Youth: Findings from the 2023 Youth Development Instrument Survey,” detailed important research findings related to her doctoral thesis, which seeks to generate new knowledge on the mental health impacts of climate change and other environmental issues on youth. Specifically, she is interested in the phenomenon of ‘eco-anxiety’ – the negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, and sadness associated with climate change and environmental issues.

From the YDI data, 45.0% of respondents (n = 5089) reported ‘feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge’ regarding climate change and other environmental issues within the past two weeks. Additionally, 40.7% (n = 4530) felt anxious that their personal behaviours would do little to help fix the problems. However, a smaller proportion of students (13.5%) were identified to have a significant number of eco-anxiety experiences (i.e., different experiences of eco-anxiety at moderate to high frequency). Interestingly, several demographic factors were also found to be associated with having a significant number of eco-anxiety experiences including experiencing financial pressure and identifying as LGBTQIA2S+. These findings point to areas where greater research work is required, including collaboration with youth to further interpret and contextualize quantitative YDI results and co-development of youth-specific resources for eco-anxiety.