Associations between meaning in life and suicidal ideation in young people: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Suicidal ideation is a strong predictor of suicide among young people and is an outcome of interactions between protective and risk factors. Previous studies have focused primarily on risk factors while there is little evidence on important protective factors such as meaning in life. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to examine the association between meaning in life and suicidal ideation among young people, and to explore potential moderating effects including demographics (gender and age) and social factors (economy and culture). We searched EBSCO, Embase, PsycINFO, PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science for relevant studies that reported correlations between meaning in life and suicidal ideation from their inception to October 2022. Studies were included in this review if they were empirical studies, written in English and sampled general young people aged 10–24. We employed a random-effects model meta-analysis to estimate the effect size. We identified 3168 references after removing duplicates and 11 studies (of 18 samples) were included in the review and meta-analysis. The meta-analysis revealed a moderate negative correlation between meaning in life and suicidal ideation (r = -0.51, 95%CI [-0.57, −0.45]) in young people. In addition, the correlation between meaning in life and suicidal ideation was stronger in high-income (r = -0.51, 95%CI [-0.54, −0.48]) and individualist countries (r = -0.51, 95%CI [-0.53, −0.48]) compared with upper-middle-income (r = -0.39, 95%CI [-0.41, −0.37]) and collectivist countries (r = -0.40, 95%CI [-0.41, −0.38]), respectively, but comparable across gender and age. We identified strong negative associations between meaning in life and suicide ideation in high-income and individualist countries. This highlights that approaches targeting enhancing meaning in life should be considered in suicide prevention and intervention, especially in high-income and individualist countries.