The relationship between parent eco-anxiety and child depression/anxiety and the mediating role of child hopelessness

Background Emerging perspectives suggest that parental eco-anxiety may influence youth mental health. Building on this framework and established models linking parental distress to child internalizing symptoms, this study examined associations between parental eco-anxiety and children's depression and anxiety, as well as the mediating role of hopelessness. Methods A cross-sectional study included 175 parent–adolescent dyads recruited from a general pediatrics outpatient clinic. Parents completed a measure of eco-anxiety, and children completed measures of hopelessness, depression, and anxiety. Correlational analyses and structural equation modeling with bootstrapping assessed direct and indirect pathways. Results Parental eco-anxiety was significantly associated with child depression, anxiety, and hopelessness after adjustment for sociodemographic variables (all p < .001). Mediation analyses showed that child hopelessness significantly mediated the associations between parental eco-anxiety and child depression (B = 0.124, 95% CI [0.065, 0.194]) and child anxiety (B = 0.172, 95% CI [0.084, 0.290]). Subdimension-based analyses further indicated that the behavioral symptoms component of eco-anxiety was significantly associated with child hopelessness (B = 0.661, p = .002) and with indirect associations with both child depression (B = 0.361, 95% CI [0.138, 0.668]) and child anxiety (B = 0.507, 95% CI [0.174, 1.001]). Conclusions Our findings indicate that parental eco-anxiety is associated with children's depression and anxiety through a pathway involving child hopelessness, with the behavioral symptoms component of eco-anxiety playing a key role. These preliminary results highlight parental eco-anxiety and child hopelessness as relevant targets for preventive approaches to youth internalizing symptoms in the context of the climate crisis.