In South Carolina a grieving mother whose son died by suicide hands out stickers to young people. The sticker bears the words “Jackson Matt

Do You ‘Matter’ to Others? The Answer Could Predict Your Mental Health

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2022-10-06 20:00:45

In South Carolina a grieving mother whose son died by suicide hands out stickers to young people. The sticker bears the words “Jackson Matters and So Do You.” To be important to others—to matter—has become more than just a truism. “You Matter” is the tagline of the National Suicide Prevention hotline. And the phrase “Black Lives Matter” calls attention to the exclusionary racism to which more than one in eight Americans is exposed.

Over the past 30 years, but never more so than now, psychologists have formalized “mattering” into a psychological construct that uniquely predicts depression, suicidal thoughts or other mental ills. It also foretells physical resilience among the elderly.

Increasingly a consensus is building that mattering stands on its own in psychological terms: “There is no other construct that gets at people’s need to feel valued and seen by others as important,” says Gordon Flett of York University in Ontario, author of The Psychology of Mattering: Understanding the Human Need to Be Significant (2018). Mattering overlaps with self-esteem, social support and a sense of belonging, he says, but is not identical. What’s especially powerful, he says, is that compared to other psychological states, a low sense of mattering is more amenable to change. And that goal can be achieved with years of therapy. “People can learn to engage with others in ways that foster their own sense of mattering,” he says.

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