Nuclear Anxiety in a context of Russian-Ukrainian War 2022 (RUW-22): Descriptive Cross-sectional Study
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| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | Nuclear anxiety and its consequences, are expected to be heightened amid the Russian-Ukrainian War of 2022 (RUW-22).The main goal of the study is to assess the prevalence of nuclear anxiety and its possible risk factors in the group of Czech university students from March till April 2022 of RUW-22.A digital self-administered questionnaire (SAQ) was used to collect data.The SAQ consisted of multiple-choice items questioning about demographic characteristics, generalized anxiety symptoms using generalized anxiety disorder-7 (GAD-7), depressive symptoms using patient health questionnaire–9 (PHQ-9), attitudes towards civilian uses of nuclear power, and nuclear war-related anxiety.Of 591 participated students, 67.7% were females, 68.2% were Czech nationals, and 61.8% followed the RUW-22 news at least once a day.In terms of the civilian uses of nuclear power, most participants agreed that nuclear power was safe (64.5%), denied being afraid that civilian use of nuclear power might deteriorate their health (79.7%) and thought that public acceptance was important for building new nuclear power plants (56.9%).About 42.1% and 45.5% of the participants reported feeling depressed at the possibility of nuclear war and agreed that the chances of a nuclear war in their lifetime were very high, respectively.23.9% reported looking for recommendations for protection against nuclear accidents and 19.3% were looking for the nearest bomb shelter.The depression about nuclear war possibility was positively and relatively strongly correlated with the level of “feeling concerned about the RUW-22” (rs = 0.401), and it was moderately correlated with GAD-7(rs = 0.377) and PHQ-9(rs = 0.274) scores and weakly correlated with RUW-2-related news following frequency (rs = 0.196).Within the limitations of the present study, nuclear anxiety was common among Czech university students.Its risk factors may include but are not limited to the female gender, common psychological disorders such as generalized anxiety and depression, RUW-22-related news following frequency, and level of “feeling concerned” |