Eco-anxiety: An adaptive behavior or a mental disorder? Results of a psychometric study

Objective

Eco-anxiety is a complex construct that has been created to grasp the psychological impact of the consequences of global warming. The concept needs a reliably valid questionnaire to better evaluate its impact on the risk of anxiety and depressive disorders. The Eco-Anxiety Questionnaire (EAQ-22) evaluates two dimensions: ‘habitual ecological anxiety’ and ‘distress related to eco-anxiety’. However, a version in French, one of the world's widely spoken languages, was until now lacking. We aimed to translate and validate the French EAQ-22 and to evaluate the prevalence of the level of the two dimensions of eco-anxiety and the relationship with anxiety and depressive symptoms in a representative adult sample of the French general population.

Methods

This study was performed under the auspices of the Institut national du sommeil et de la vigilance (INSV). Participants (18–65 years) were recruited by an institute specialized in conducting online surveys of representative population samples (quota sampling). Two native French speakers and two native English speakers performed a forward-backward translation of the questionnaire. The Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HAD) was administered to assess anxiety (HAD-A) and depressive (HAD-D) symptoms and for external validity. Internal structural validity and external validity were analysed.

Results

Evaluation was performed on 1004 participants: mean age 43.47 years (SD = 13.41, range: [19–66]); 54.1% (n = 543) women. Using the HAD, 312 (31.1%) patients had current clinically significant anxiety symptoms (HAD-A > 10) and 150 (14.9%) had current clinically significant depressive symptoms (HAD-D>10). Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.934, indicating very good internal consistency. Correlation between EAQ-22 and HAD scores was low (r[1004] = 0.209, P < 0.001), ‘habitual ecological anxiety’ was correlated less with HAD-A and HAD-D than ‘distress related to eco-anxiety’, indicating good external validity.

Conclusion

This study validates the French EAQ-22 and paves the way for using the EAQ-22 as a global tool for assessing eco-anxiety. Further prospective studies are now required to better evaluate the impact of eco-anxiety on the occurrence of anxiety and depressive disorder.