BIO

Viviana Vargas is currently an ambitious undergraduate Psychology student in the College of Arts and Sciences at Florida State University. She is currently involved in research at the Florida Center for Reading Research and a Suicide Measures and Correlations lab. Viviana aims to go to graduate school for Clinical Psychology and eventually either open her own practice or work in VA hospital. She is most interested in working with the children and adolescent populations and making counseling services more accessible for people from all backgrounds. Viviana’s goal is to further our understanding and support of children afflicted with trauma and mental health issues. Outside of her academics she is involved in the hospitality department at Club Downunder/Union Productions and is an Equity and Inclusion Representative within Hall Council.

Meta-Analysis on Meaning of Life and Suicidality

Abstract

The relation between meaning in life and suicide is an age-old question, long debated by philosophers, theologians, artists, and scientists. Meaning and purpose are frequent topics in therapy; having a sense of meaning and/or purpose is often assumed to be relevant to the therapeutic process. This project is aimed at investigating if there is a significant association between meaning in life and each suicidal outcome (viz., suicide ideation, suicide risk, suicide attempt), the effect size of each association, if the effect sizes change when considering unreported/unpublished (i.e., “gray”) literature, and if effect sizes differ across different moderators. This study is important to understand what the actual associations are between meaning in life and suicidal outcomes, rather than simply assuming that such associations exist. If meaning in life is associated with a suicidal outcome (for some or all groups), that would be useful to know in order to improve detection, prevention, and treatment of suicidal outcomes. Existing studies have found a putative relation between meaning in life within suicidal ideation (e.g., Marco et al., 2017), suicide risk (e.g., Bryan et al., 2019), and suicide attempt (e.g., Gsemalu & Ha, 2020). There will be a significant negative association between meaning in life and each suicidal outcome (i.e., suicidal ideation, suicide risk, and suicide attempt) The effect size of each association will be moderate, and marked publication bias will not be present.

Keywords: Meta-Analysis, Suicide, Clinical Psychology