[MUSIC PLAYING] We are the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, or ACAMH for short. And this is ACAMH Learn. Welcome to Mind The Kids, a podcast series dedicated to exploring the latest advancements in child and adolescent mental health research and practise. I'm Clara, an academic clinical fellow in child psychiatry. And I'm passionate about understanding and addressing the diverse mental health challenges faced by young people. In this series, I will be joined by renowned researchers and clinicians from around the world to discuss their cutting edge research, innovative interventions, and best practises in child and adolescent mental health. And today, I'm really excited because I have the pleasure of receiving Dr. Joanne Park from Mount Royal University in Canada. Dr. Park is also the principal investigator of the Parenting Resilient Kids Lab, the Park Lab. And today, we're going to be discussing her recently published paper, prevalence, conceptual distinctiveness, and cross-sectional correlates of climate worry in Canadian adolescents, which was published at the Child And Adolescent Mental Health Journal. There will be a link to the paper in the podcast page. With no further ado, it's an honour to have you here, Dr. Park. And the climate crisis is part of the public conversation now. And more researchers like yourself are dedicated to understanding the effects of this in youth mental health. So to start us off, I was going to ask you what was the key question or knowledge gap you were trying to address with your study. And can you tell us more about this concept, this very new concept of climate worry. For sure. Thank you for having me. It's really an honour to be invited onto this podcast. Yeah. I guess I would want to preface everything with just stating that I didn't really come into this topic as an expert in climate worry or in climate-related mental health research. Really, I'm a clinical psychologist by training. And so one of the questions that my collaborators and I really had when we were thinking about climate worry is whether youth were experiencing worry about the climate crisis. So first off, are they experiencing worry? And whether that climate worry was meaningfully different from generalised anxiety? So those were the two main questions. So to summarise, it's kind of like-- there's a lot of research looking at climate worry in older adolescents. So like 14, 16-year-old, and up. But we don't actually know a lot about young adolescents. So the age range I was looking at was about 11 to 13. So we first wanted to understand like what are these younger youth really experiencing. What are they feeling about the climate crisis? And then the other piece of it is, given the training as a clinical psychologist and coming into this research area with fresh eyes, I was really curious about whether climate worry was maybe just expression of more generalised anxiety. So if we think about, for example, symptoms of GAD, or generalised anxiety disorder, that involves worry across a range of topics. So it would make sense that someone who had more symptoms of general anxiety might also be worried about the climate. So that was one of the other guiding questions. Is is there a really something distinct about climate worry? And here is another interesting piece, is that you'll find if you look at the literature, there's not a lot of agreement about terms. And so I think that's one of the directions or one of the calls in this research area, is that we need to get on the same page about what all these terms mean, because you might run into terms like eco-anxiety, or climate anxiety, or climate worry, or climate emotions, or those kinds of things. So I think that's an area that's being worked on. But in this study, we defined it in two ways. So we looked at affective climate worry and we looked at cognitive climate worry. And both were intended to capture different angles of climate worry or how young people experience worry about climate change. So with the affective component, we define this as a general worried emotional response. So it's that immediate gut feeling that you might get when you're asked how worried are you about climate change from one to five. No worry at all to extremely worried. And then cognitive climate worry, we defined as getting at more specific thoughts or cognitions about climate change. So if a child or a youth has specific thoughts about fears for the future, or how their daily life might be impacted by climate change, or of future generations, that would be a cognitive climate. Thank you so much. That's very well explained. And you mentioned a point that it's really interesting to me and I also think one of the great innovations in your study, which is the fact that you focused on younger adolescents. So adolescents aged 11 to 14. Lots of our audience is composed by clinicians and clinical psychologists like yourself. And they will know and we know that that age period is a critical window for development. And you mentioned one of the things you were interested in was distinguishing between climate worry and just generalised anxiety, which is also really common in that age group. So I wanted to ask you, how did you disentangle these two concepts in your study and what were your findings in that area? Yeah, I agree. This is a pretty interesting developmental window for all the reasons you mentioned. And I think the other piece of it, too, is that young adolescents are maybe still developing some of those abstract reasoning skills, like to grasp a really complex and large kind of concept as the climate crisis. Even adults might struggle with that. So I think it's a really interesting window. And because of that too, I wondered if maybe within this age range specifically, it might be harder to separate. Like maybe climate worry isn't so meaningfully different than just general anxiety. So that was-- yeah, that was the question. And so one of the ways we looked at this or tried to disentangle it is that we were interested in looking at how does climate worry impact functioning or is it associated with functioning. I would use that word associated because it was a cross-sectional design. But how is it associated with functioning like mu-- youths or adolescents, optimism, well-being, their kind of daily behaviours or routines? And is it associated with those things above and beyond general anxiety? So statistically, if we control for general anxiety symptoms, do we find climate worry predicts functioning or is associated with functioning above and beyond? And we did find that was the case. So climate worry showed both affective and cognitive. Climate worry showed distinct associations with our functioning variables. And I can talk more about that if interested. But yeah, so both of them showed some unique associations. That's really interesting. And actually that's a really nice lead up to my next question, because you've mentioned these two separate concepts of effective climate worry and cognitive climate worry. And I was going to ask if you had differing findings among these two concepts. And yeah, and you just mentioned that. Actually you did for generalised anxiety. So yeah, I would be really interested in hearing more about it. Yeah, for sure. And I think one of the things that's really interesting about looking at affective versus cognitive is that if we're able to disentangle the pieces of climate worry that maybe gives clinicians more of an idea of how to address it-- so for example, cognitive, if it's more the cognitive area, as a clinical psychologist, I'm thinking about things like cognitive behavioural therapy or something like that maybe addresses or targets those cognitions. So I think that's why it's really important to look at these pieces separately. So one of the things we looked at is correlations with general anxiety. So both affective and cognitive climate worry were correlated with generalised anxiety, which makes sense. If you're more anxious overall, you'll likely also endorse feeling worried about the climate. But those correlations were actually relatively modest. So that suggests that they aren't totally the same construct. So that was kind of our first clue. And then as I mentioned, we looked at correlations with functioning, controlling for generalised anxiety. Both climate worry-- sorry, cognitive and affective climate worry were associated with functioning above and beyond general anxiety. So that shows us that they are distinct from general anxiety. But we also ran a bit of a stricter test by-- I guess to-- I don't want to get into too much of the weeds of it. But we controlled for both mum and child report of their general anxiety. And when we did this, we actually found that cognitive climate worry seemed to be more robust in its kind of distinctiveness from general anxiety. Once you added in child's report of their own general anxiety, the associations between affective climate worry and functioning variables decreased and were no longer significant. Whereas for cognitive climate worry, those associations remained. So what that's telling me is that maybe affective climate worry is reflecting more of a general tendency towards distress that could be accounted for more by the symptoms of general anxiety, whereas cognitive climate worry can be maybe capturing something more specific or it's the kiddos who might be thinking more about climate worry that show more of a distinction there. Yeah, no, that's really fascinating. And in your study, if I'm not mistaken, also it was a two stage study, in the sense that only the kids who answered yes to the effective worry question received the cognitive climate worry question. So as you said, it's very likely the children with higher scores in cognitive climate worry, they represent that group that is really worried about climate change. What do you think? That's right, yes. And I think that's one of the big unfortunate limitations of this study. It's a secondary data analysis. And it's part of a larger kind of longitudinal cohort. And so one of the practicalities with that is that we can't ask too many questions at each wave because otherwise maybe participants won't participate. So we did have to streamline it. And so this is one of the things that was streamlined, is that we could only ask those cognitive questions for the kiddos who reported at least some affective climate worry, which actually ended up being 60% of the sample. So 60% reported at least a little bit of climate worry. But yeah, I think that's an important limitation to keep in mind. But I think it's wonderful what you did. I completely empathise with your predicament of a cohort studies because I think it's wonderful to be able to use this data because it's often really rich, representative data. But then that's the double edged sword. Here in England it's the same with the mental health of children and young people cohort. There are limitations that are inherent to the data set. But actually, I think there is something really wonderful about your data set, the data set to use. You had gender diversity measures, which is what leads to my next question. Because among the children who reported-- the younger adolescents who reported cognitive climate worry, I know that higher scores in cognitive climate worry were associated with gender differences. Like the girls and gender diverse young adolescents were more likely to report it. So as a clinical psychologist, I wanted to ask you, how do you make sense of these findings and just to commend you, because I know that gender representativeness, it's a real issue in cohorts. So it's so wonderful that you have a cohort that has data on gender diverse young people. Absolutely yeah. And I think this is one of the measures that we started to incorporate, especially as we started to collect self-reports from kids. So that happened only recently when the kids turned about-- I think 9 or 10 is when we started to collect that and ask those kinds of questions. And again, there's a caveat in that the actual percentage of adolescents identifying as gender diverse was pretty small. I think around 4%. But I think it's still important to be looking at gender identity in light of these questions. And so exactly, we found that girls reported more climate worry than boys and then gender diverse individuals reported more than boys as well. And sometimes more than girls. So I think just thinking about those findings, it's actually-- when you look at the broader literature, it's actually not too surprising. It aligns with some of the other findings in older adolescents and adults, where girls in general tend to report more climate worry than boys. And this finding when we think about it, it makes sense when you think about emotion socialisation or tendencies to ruminate those kinds of differences that we often find across genders. So girls might be just more likely to report worries and endorse worries. They might be more likely to ruminate about things that are happening in the world like climate change compared to boys. The gender diversity piece of it is also really interesting. Again, something that's, I think not-- it's not surprising, because, I mean, other studies have also found similar results. And we tried to make sense of this result in a few different ways. So one possibility that we considered is that in gender diverse adolescents, they tend to maybe endorse higher levels and experience higher levels of psychological distress overall given their experiences. And that perhaps makes them maybe more sensitive to stressors. So things like climate change can be more threatening and difficult because of that kind of additional psychological distress that they might be experiencing. Another kind of angle or explanation we thought about is that maybe gender diverse youth might be more likely to endorse sociopolitical values that are more in line with concern about climate change. And so perhaps that might explain some of this kind of higher level of climate worry reported. But again, these are all more tentative explanations to try to make sense of that result. Not anything we could test in our data. Yeah, no. All of those hypotheses are valid I think. There was a really interesting study. I don't know if you saw. It was published using a Danish registry data looking at trajectories of gender diverse adolescents over a really long period of time. What they showed, I think, in a very convincing way was that we know that gender diverse young people, adolescents usually have higher levels of mental health distress for numerous factors. Well, we know this happens. So I was wondering if it wasn't the case of the first hypothesis you suggested. But I think also equally, as you said, those are just tentative speculations. But it's really interesting. Yeah, really interesting findings. Yeah. I mean, I would mention. And this in-- this wasn't in the paper, but we did explore what if we controlled for psychological distress or depression, anxiety. Are there still those gender differences? And we actually did find it was still present. So even controlling for anxiety and depression, gender identity seemed to still show some significant differences in climate worry. That's really interesting. And the other thing-- and I think it's also interesting in the light that those are younger children, because you mentioned about, oh, it could be because you're more socially and politically inclined. And I think it could very well be. But it's interesting to see if that's the case, to see that level of social and political engagement at such a young age, because those are 11 to 14-year-olds, right? Yeah, it really is. And I mean, I think there's probably such a huge range in this age range. Like some young people are very invested and very active and aware of what's going on in the world and others aren't. And that's part of development too. So yeah, it's a really interesting age to look at this. Yeah. As there are adults thinking about-- I don't know. The adults I know, certainly there are people who are more politically and socially engaged and passionate about certain causes than others. That actually is a nice link to the next question I wanted to ask you. You've mentioned the broader literature and what is known in climate worry in older adolescents and even young adults if we consider that over 18 up to that age of 24. And I was just wondering, how did your findings in younger adolescents compare to what we know about older adolescents? Totally yeah. And yeah, there's a lot-- I mean, there's a lot of research 14, 16 plus if we look at just the numbers. So some of the research, the main studies that have the same questions that we asked across United States, another study in Canada, kind of global reports of climate worry in adolescents, older adolescents. They typically report about 50% to 60% of the samples reporting high levels of climate worry. So half to a majority are reporting higher levels of climate worry. Now if you compare that with our younger sample-- so I think I mentioned 60% reported at least a little worry. But then, of course, if we look at the high levels, it's much smaller. So I think only about 11% reported high levels of climate worry. So 60 versus 11 or 50 to 60 versus 11. It's quite striking that difference. But I think in some regards it's to be expected because-- I mean, like we see younger adolescents are maybe developmentally not fully able to grasp or there might be more of a range in that age range of being able to grasp and think about the implications of climate change. They might be less exposed to climate-related information in terms of like access to social media, where older adolescents are probably more likely to be on social media versus younger adolescents. One of the things that's interesting in this study is that age was correlated with climate worry. So the older kids in our sample reported more climate worry. So I think that suggests that we probably will see that increase as kids grow older, which is the case that we see in other studies. I think this is a good place to mention like another caveat of this study. Maybe a reminder is the context in which this is measured because I don't know if-- probably not everyone will know about Alberta, like this is Alberta, Canada, is where the study was conducted. And there's a particular economic and political context in Alberta, which is that much of the economy is tied to the fossil fuel industry. And so overall, I think studies have shown that people in Alberta have shown less support for climate-related action compared to the rest of Canada. And so we're looking at climate worry in kids that are growing up in this province. So I think that possibly might-- I think it's a context to keep in mind when we're looking at these numbers. At the same time though, in Alberta, we've had a lot of climate-related events in the past few years. Like forest fires and major flooding. And so the kids in this region, they've experienced these things too. And usually when we see kids who've experienced climate-related events, climate worry is increased in those areas. And so it's hard to say which-- one on one side, you might see less climate worry. On the other side, you're like, well, but maybe that might be increasing climate worry. So I think the message then is just like to keep in mind each study will have its own characteristics and quirks and things that kind of colour how you look at the results. Absolutely. Before reading your study, I didn't know about Alberta's context. But it's really interesting because you bring that up in the discussion. And I think it certainly makes a huge difference. The other thing I was thinking about also, it's-- kids will certainly have experienced those events, as you said. But also especially when you're younger, when you're around age 11, a lot of your views on the world come from your parents. And if the parents of these kids are somehow linked to the fossil fuel industry, maybe, as you said, like there is an important economic background to the study. Yes. Yeah. And I'm not-- I mean, I'm in no means a political scientist or know anything really, but yes, I mean, I can imagine it would make a huge impact how your parents talk about it and even how your schools talk about it. And schools can be influenced as well by their surrounding communities. So I think that that's important to keep in mind. Yeah. It would be interesting. I mean, I don't think we had this data. But it would have been interesting to know what fields the parents in the study were working in to tease that apart a bit, but yeah. Yeah, that actually would-- and I suppose it would also be interesting to know about kids in other provinces as well. So I don't know much about Canada, but I know, for example, that Quebec had some pretty bad snowstorms and sometimes had some very disruptive climate events. It would be interesting to see how kids in different provinces experience that. But it's really, really interesting. And yeah, I think you guys have done a very interesting and important study. But also the other question I wanted to ask you, because you're a clinical psychologist by background. So I think you'll resonate with this question. So basically, I don't want to over-pathologize climate worry at all, especially given how common it is. Like you said, your study found 60% among effective worry in younger adolescents. So it is really common. But thinking about implications, for example, for schools and even parents, like what do you think are the main implications of your findings? Yeah, that's a great question. So I think you make a good point. We don't want to over-pathologize it. Climate worry is not inherently a bad thing. In some ways, it could be a reasonable response to the climate crisis. And I would say my prefaces with the data of the study doesn't actually suggest any kind of intervention or any kind of implication there. But as a psychologist, it's something I always think about in that I think maybe it's more important about-- rather than whether adolescents are experiencing it or not, but maybe the more important piece of it might be, what are they maybe doing about it or how are they coping with it. Because I think you can have maladaptive coping or maladaptive responses if climate worry leads an adolescent to feeling hopeless, or a lot of distress, or maybe they're avoiding or they feel apathy, or they might be engaging less in social or academic areas in their lives. Then certainly I think that needs to be addressed. And parents, teachers can be looking out for those kinds of maybe more maladaptive responses. And I think part of the work and I think it's divided among parents, schools, maybe even media presentations, is how information is presented. So when we're talking about climate change, when we're talking about the climate crisis, maybe a big piece of it is helping adolescents and young people think about what can be done about it, giving a piece of presenting it in a way that feels like manageable or at least gives them some sense of agency and hope, some practical ways to respond to it. I know there's research on this showing that things like meaning-focused coping. So for example, if an adolescent feels quite distressed about the climate crisis, if they engage in more pro-environmental actions, that can be helpful. So thinking about coping and thinking about how to help the adolescent act upon some of their worries, I think, address it, or problem solve, or at least go in that direction might be helpful. No, that's really helpful. And to wrap up, I think my final question is about-- you mentioned already a few limitations of your study. But I wanted to ask you in terms of climate worry. And it doesn't need to be younger adolescents. But climate worry and adolescents, what is the research you would like to see in this area, or that you're really looking forward to doing in the future? Yeah, for sure. I think there are two things. So one is around, I think we talked about earlier, standardisation of terms and that issue in the field and specifically related to this study, I think, noticing some limitations with how we measured climate worry. I think it'd be really important to include in these measures measures of severity. Like how severe is this adolescent experience of climate worry? Is their functioning impaired? I think that would give us more of a sense of distinguishing between adaptive and maladaptive worries. Because at this point, we just know how worried they are. We don't really know whether that's adaptive or maladaptive. So I think that piece is a gap in this younger adolescent age range. But another really interesting direction for the future, and one actually that my collaborators and I are moving towards, is looking at longitudinal associations. Just kind of in every research field, cross-sectional associations tend to dominate because they're quicker and easier. And including this one because this is the only time point we had a measure for climate worry. But I think one question for the future is to understand how climate worry develops over time, what predicts climate worry, like risk and resilience factors, for example. Maybe what later outcomes it might be associated with. This would really, I think, give us a better sense of how important is this construct, what are some of the factors that might be useful to target in supporting adolescents. And because we are looking at this in a longitudinal cohort, I think as we continue to collect data, as these adolescents are older, we can start to ask and address some of these questions. No, that sounds super interesting, especially as you said, that lots of the time we end up focusing on cross-sectional associations because that's what's available. But yeah, I think when you are able to do longitudinal analysis and even do causal inference, it's really valuable. So I'm really looking forward to reading that when that comes out. And yeah, I just wanted to say a huge thank you, Dr. Park. Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing with us about your study and about climate worry. I've learned a lot. And it gave me a lot of food for thought. So yeah. If you're interested in knowing more about Dr. Park's work and her group, we will leave the links to your lab, to her lab, The Park Lab, and also to the paper if you want to read the original version. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for having me. Join me next week where I'll be talking about executive function challenges with Lauren Kenworthy. [MUSIC PLAYING]