Impact of social unrest and psychological well-being : the moderating role of meaning in life

Abstract

Past research had studied the effect of posttraumatic stress on people’s psychological well-being in various traumatic events, and the role of meaning in life as a protective factor in buffering the negative impact. The current study aims to extend the past research by exploring the relationships between these variables in the context of social unrest in Hong Kong. 571 and 367 adults participated in two waves of data collection, which are six months apart, respectively. They completed self-report questionnaires assessing posttraumatic stress, meaning in life and psychological well-being, including negative emotional state, life satisfaction and suicidal ideation. They also completed a suicide implicit association test. Results showed that posttraumatic stress had different impacts on the psychological well-being variables six months later. More importantly, while meaning in life predicted the psychological well-being six months later in an expected direction, it was unable to moderate the link between posttraumatic stress and psychological well-being. Exploratory analyses suggested that posttraumatic stress had significant negative effect on meaning in life, causing it to slightly deteriorate six months later. The findings of this study shed light on the role of posttraumatic stress and meaning in life in the context of social unrest and provided clinical insights on the importance of work to facilitate meaning making efforts.