Meaning in Life and Coping With Everyday Stressors

The influence mechanism underlying meaning in life on career adaptability among college students: a chain intermediary model

Introduction

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has posed a huge challenge to the career situation of college students. This study aimed to understand the mechanism underlying meaning in life on career adaptability among college students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

A quantitative method was adopted. In total, 1,182 college students were surveyed using the Meaning in Life Questionnaire, the Simplified Coping Style Questionnaire, the Adult General Hope Scale, and the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale.

Results

There was a significant positive correlation between meaning in life, positive coping styles, hope, and career adaptability. Positive coping styles and hope play a separate mediating role and a chain mediating role.

Discussion

The findings of this study emphasize the importance of meaning in life among college students to improve their career adaptability. Furthermore, positive coping styles and increased levels of hope contribute to the development of career adaptability among college students.

The role of planfulness for well-being, stress, and goal disruption during COVID-19

Planfulness refers to an individual's tendency to be future oriented, mentally flexible, and cognitively strategic when engaging with goals, and has been shown to predict goal completion. We investigated the relationships among planfulness, goal disruption, stress, and psychological well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic, which served as a unique setback context. We measured these constructs using the planfulness scale, an ad-hoc survey item probing goal disruption in the pandemic, the perceived stress scale, and the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale, respectively. Participants were university students (N = 174; mean age 23.03, SD: 4.37; 77% female). Higher planfulness predicted lower goal-disruption, lower stress, and higher well-being during the pandemic, extending its benefits beyond the goal domain. High levels of planfulness did not protect against goal disruption among those participants in which the self-reported personal impact of the pandemic was highest. Differences in goal disruption across levels of planfulness were constrained to lower reported pandemic impact. However, the differences in psychological well-being and stress by levels of planfulness were retained even when self-reported perceptions of personal pandemic impact were high. More planful students maintained lower stress and higher psychological well-being than their less planful peers across levels of adversity. These findings suggest that even in extremely difficult contexts in which planfulness does not protect against goal disruption, it still confers personal benefits in terms of psychological health.

Depression and life satisfaction after Kahramanmaraş earthquakes: The serial mediation roles of life meaning and coping with earthquake stress

This study aims to examine the meaning of life, and the mediating effect of strategies for coping with earthquake stress in the relationship between depression, and life satisfaction in survivors of the 2023 Kahramanmaraş centered earthquakes. The participants of this study were 472 adults (31.1% male, 68.9% female; Mage = 24.52) who were affected by earthquakes. The data of the study were tested with the bootstrapping-based PROCESS macro program (Model-81). The results showed that depression negatively predicted life satisfaction. Meaning of life mediated the relationship between depression and life satisfaction. However, problem solving and cognitive avoidance coping strategies reduced the effects of depression and the meaning of life on life satisfaction. These results can be a resource for mental health services for earthquake victims. At the same time, the study provides evidence that protecting personal resources in disaster situations positively affects life satisfaction in terms of conservation of resources theory (COR).

Future self-continuity and depression among college students: The role of presence of meaning and perceived social support

INTRODUCTION

Future self-continuity has been shown to have a protective effect against depression. This study aims to investigate the longitudinal relationship between future self-continuity and depression among college students, and to explore the mediating role of the presence of meaning and the moderating role of perceived social support.

METHODS

We conducted two studies in China in 2022 and 2023. Study 1 was a longitudinal cross-lagged study that examined the relationship between future self-continuity and depression among 173 participants (49.13% females, Mage  = 19.39, SD = 1.63). Study 2 was a cross-sectional study that explored the mediating role of the presence of meaning and the moderating role of perceived social support among 426 participants (48.59% females, Mage  = 19.30, SD = 1.60).

RESULTS

Study 1 showed that future self-continuity (T1) could significantly predict depression (T2), but depression (T1) could not predict future self-continuity (T2). Study 2 showed that after controlling for gender, the presence of meaning mediated the relationship between future self-continuity and depression, whereas perceived social support moderated the first half of the mediated model's pathway and the direct pathway.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings suggest that enhancing the future self-continuity of college students and increasing the level of presence of meaning are effective measures for alleviating depression. Meanwhile, educators and families are called upon to provide more social support to college students.

Meaning in life as a protective factor against depression

The main objective of this study was to analyze the mediating role that meaning in life has between emotion dysregulation and depressive symptomatology in Spanish university students. Five hundred and sixty-six Spanish university students participated in the study. All of them completed the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and the Purpose in Life Test (PIL-10). A mediation model was performed to test the hypothesis that meaning in life mediates the effect of emotional dysregulation on depressive symptomatology in college students. The results show a positive, moderate, and statistically significant correlation between depression and emotional dysregulation. In addition, a negative, moderate, and statistically significant correlation was found between depression and meaning in life, and a negative, small, and statistically significant correlation between emotional dysregulation and meaning in life. Finally, the results of the mediation model evidence the role of meaning in life in different emotional dysregulation strategies and depressive symptomatology. These findings suggest the importance of incorporating the meaning in life variable in the development and implementation of prevention and treatment programs for psychological disorders.

Meaning of life as a resource for coping with psychological crisis: Comparisons of suicidal and non-suicidal patients

Introduction

Meaning is an important psychological resource both in situations of accomplishment and in situations of ongoing adversity and psychological crisis. Meaning in life underlies the reasons for staying alive both in everyday and in critical circumstances, fulfilling a buffering function with respect to life adversities.

Aim

The aim of the present study was to reveal the role of both meaningfulness, including specific sources of meaning and reasons for living, and meaninglessness (alienation) in patients suffering from profound crisis situations with or without suicidal intentions and behavior.

Methods

The sample included 148 patients (all Caucasian) who were referred to a crisis center in Moscow, Russia. Seventy-seven patients (54 females, mean age 32.00 ± 11.98 years) reported a current crisis situation in their life but denied suicidal thoughts or behavior. Twenty-nine patients (21 females, mean age 31.55 ± 13.76 years) reported suicidal ideations but denied suicidal attempts or self-harming behavior. Forty-two patients (31 females, mean age 30.64 ± 11.38 years) had episodes of suicidal attempts or self-harming behavior accompanied by suicidal intentions. There were no significant gender or age differences between groups.

Participants completed a number of measures of different aspects of meaning and meaninglessness, well-being, ill-being and psychological resources. For some patients (N = 74), a clinical checklist was completed by their doctors assessing 28 various characteristics associated with the patient’s clinical status.

Results and discussion

Meaningfulness and reasons for living were more helpful in distinguishing between reactions to profound crisis situations (suicidal intentions versus non-suicidal behavior) than were measures of well-being, ill-being, meaning crisis or personality resources. In both suicidal and non-suicidal crisis patients meaningfulness predicted more positive reasons for living. The relationship between meaningfulness and most reasons for living remained significant after controlling for clinically appraised suicidal “readiness,” acute stress and lack of social support. Self-transcendence was the major specific source of meaning predicting higher reasons for living after adjusting for general meaningfulness.

Conclusion

The data cast some light on the psychological meaning of suicide. It follows that prevention efforts are to be focused not on eliminating the factors “pushing” one to suicidal behavior, but rather on supporting inner strengths conducive of a positive decision, to be, through enhancing meaningfulness and reasons for living.