Psychological Distress and Resources Under Prolonged Exposure to an Environmental Threat: A Qualitative Study on Inhabitants Exposed to the Campi Flegrei’s Bradyseism

Prolonged environmental threats expose communities to recurring hazard cues and uncertainty, yet psychological consequences and resources involved in adaptation remain underexplored. This study examined psychological outcomes, personal and social resources, and their co-occurrence among inhabitants exposed to bradyseism in Campi Flegrei, southern Italy. Fifty-two semi-structured interviews were conducted with inhabitants of the Campi Flegrei area. Eighteen were recruited without reference to a specific stakeholder role, whereas 34 were recruited based on their institutional, professional, or community roles. Narratives were examined through theory-driven thematic analysis. Six psychological outcomes were considered, including five distress-related negative psychological outcomes (i.e., anxiety, post-traumatic symptoms, depression, sleep disturbances, and suicidal ideation) and one adaptive psychological outcome (i.e., post-traumatic growth). Distress was classified using literature-derived categories, while the Social-psychological Antecedents to Resilience for Adaptation (SARA) classified resources by locus, specificity, and availability. Anxiety-related experiences were most frequent, followed by post-traumatic stress-related experiences, depression-related experiences, and sleep disturbances; post-traumatic growth was rare, and no segments related to suicidal ideation were identified. Risk perception, experience, acceptance, cognitive reappraisal, and place attachment were frequently identified as available resources in narratives involving distress, whereas information emerged predominantly as unavailable and available social support was identified only once in the corpus. These resources co-occurred with manifestations of distress without revealing a consistent protective pattern. The findings document the coexistence of resources and distress without establishing the direction of their relationships or a protective role. Future research should clarify resource–distress directionality and examine whether perceived agency explains why some resource constellations coexist with persistent distress, whereas others are associated with more adaptive responses under prolonged environmental threat.