The Relationship between Meaning in Life and Mental Well-Being

Abstract

A number of recent studies reported in the literature lent impetus to the research conducted for the current study. The hypothesis addressed is that meaning in life is positively associated with mental well-being irrespective of the nature or topos of the psychopathology. This hypothesis stems from an existential perspective on psychopathology (and consequently psychotherapy) which holds that a sense of meaning in life is a vital element in providing coherence to an individual's worldview and hence to his/her mental well-being. Interestingly, such an hypothesis also serves to challenge, within the existential approach, the view of one of the earliest existential psychologists, namely Victor Frankl that absence of meaning in life is associated only with a specific form of psychopathology which he termed noogenic neurosis. Correlational analyses on data, yielded from a random sample (N = 92) of South African university students at one campus, corroborated that meaning in life is associated with a wide spectrum of conventional categories of psychopathology as measured by the MMPI as well as with general neurosis measured by the revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire - statistically significant correlations were established.

Implicit religion, explicit religion and purpose in life: an empirical enquiry among 13- to 15-year-old adolescents

“…Another set of studies have demonstrated that Eysenck's three dimensional model of personality is able to predict individual differences over a range of areas concerned with subjective well-being in general (Francis, Brown, Lester, & Philipchalk, 1998;Francis, 1999;Hills & Argyle, 2001;Stewart, Ebmeier, & Deavy, 2005;Robbins, Francis, & Edwards, 2010) and with purpose in life in particular (Pearson & Sheffield, 1974, 1989Addad, 1987;Moomal, 1999;Francis, 2000;Francis & Kaldor, 2001;Francis, Jewell, & Robbins, 2010;). …”

Personality Traits and Positive/Negative Affects: An Analysis of Meaning in Life among Adults

“…Conscientiousness is related to leadership, self-discipline, goal-orientation, self-sufficiency, orderliness, sense of mission, productivity, and determination (Costa & McCrae, 1995), while agreeableness is defined as being reliable, agreeable, straight-forward, self-giving, and modest (Bono et al, 2002). Current conceptualizations associated with the concept of meaning in life present different personality traits; for instance, meaning in life is negatively correlated with neuroticism (Halama, 2005;Moomal, 1999) but positively correlated with extroversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness (Lavigne et al, 2013;Mascaro & Rosen, 2005;Steger, Kashdan, Sullivan, & Lorentz, 2008). In the light of these theoretical insights, it can be asserted that personality traits and positive/negative affects are significant variables in interpreting meaning in life.…”

The role of life meaning in psychotherapy

“…For example, meaning in life has consistently been negatively associated with depression (Debats et al, 1993;Elmore & Chambers, 1967;Garner, Bhatia, Dean, & Byars, 2007;Mascaro & Rosen, 2005Moomal, 1999;Shek, 1992;Wang, Lightsey, Pietruszka, Uruk, & Wells, 2007). One study proposed a model hypothesizing that depression leads to a lack of purpose in life, which in turn leads to suicidal ideation and substance use (Harlow, Newcomb, & Bentler, 1986).…”

“…Other mental health issues associated with meaning in life include anxiety (Debats et al, 1993;Moomal, 1999;Shek, 1992;Zika & Chamberlain, 1992), "psychological distress" as measured by a revised version of the Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90-R; Derogatis, 1977) (Debats, 1996;Debats et al, 1993) or the MHI (Vilchinsky & Kravetz, 2005;Zika & Chamberlain, 1992), and hope (Mascaro & Rosen, 2006).…”

“…In an effort to increase effect size, researchers might identify and focus on more specific aspects of psychotherapy processes and outcomes with which meaning in life might be related rather than using general measures of wellbeing, problems, or functioning. For example, life meaning has been found to correlate moderately to highly with depression (Debats et al, 1993;Elmore & Chambers, 1967;Garner et al, 2007;Mascaro & Rosen, 2005Moomal, 1999;Shek, 1992;Wang et al, 2007) and anxiety (Debats et al, 1993;Moomal, 1999;Shek, 1992;Zika & Chamberlain, 1992). In addition to being empirically justified, the variables of depression and anxiety also have theoretical bases.…”