«Life has no meaning» feeling in adolescents - relation to suicidal ideation and attempts and mental health

With the use of instrumentation of the international project SEYLE, school children (n=601) aged 14,87 (SD=1,11) were questioned. In this research the correlations of the question “Did you have the feeling (for the last 2 weeks) that life has no meaning” with suicidal phantasies, thoughts and plans, as well as with past suicidal attempts and some problems of mental health (depression, anxiety, feeling of being stressed, selfperception) were studied. Feeling that “life has no meaning” in adolescents is strongly correlated with depression (r=0,62), lower correlation (r=0,40) was found with feeling of worthlessness and self-dislike, with feeling of being stressed (r=0,40), anxiety and irritability (r=0,35). Moreover, feeling that “life has no meaning” was strongly associated with suicidal phantasies and with more definite suicidal ideation, like thoughts and plans of attempt. The lowest association was found with the past suicide attempts. All these associations and correlations suggest that feeling that “life has no meaning” plays an important role among factors that lead to mental health problems, low self-perception and self-esteem in adolescents from one side and suicidal ideation and even suicide attempts from the other side.