Although awareness of high suicide rates among men has increased, mental health issues in this population remain to be researched. Existential psychology, which examines issues related to meaning and values, could offer a new perspective on this topic. Illustration image Pixabay
To better understand men’s psychological well-being, a research team from McGill University and the University of British Columbia recently conducted a study into the possible connection between their psychological distress and the meaning they give to their lives.
In a study of 364 men, researchers observed that subjects who felt they had found meaning in their lives were less likely to experience general psychological pressure, including symptoms of depression and anxiety. Two other key mental health factors were examined: resilience and loneliness. The authors were thus able to find that the search for existential meaning not only directly contributes to reducing psychological stress, but can also indirectly reduce this stress by strengthening resilience and reducing feelings of loneliness.
These results suggest that it may be possible to strengthen men’s resilience, overcome their loneliness, and ultimately reduce their psychological distress by developing and implementing psychotherapeutic interventions that help them give meaning to their lives. Researchers must now attempt to identify the key sources of meaning for men at each stage of their lives.
“To support men and strengthen their mental health in our ever-changing and increasingly fragmented cultural landscape, we need to pay more attention to the presence or absence of meaning in their lives,” says Tyler Brown, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Family Medicine at McGill University and lead author of the study.
The article “The Impact of Meaning in Life on Psychological Distress in Men: A Serial Multiple Mediation Model with Resilience and Loneliness” by Tyler L. Brown et al. was published in Current Research in Behavioral Sciences.