With the re-imposition of COVID-19 restrictions, there has been much discussion regarding the mental health of Canadians across the country two years into the pandemic.
The pandemic has brought with it an epidemic of mental health issues due to lockdowns and restrictions on social gatherings as well as difficulty accessing mental health support. A poll conducted last month by Leger found that two in three respondents believed that the mental health of Canadians was currently much worse compared to before the pandemic.
Students in particular, especially those studying at post-secondary institutions, have had problems with mental health due to the stresses of online class and the pressure to succeed academically. Burak Reisyan, a fourth-year student of psychology at York, has observed that these stressors, along with the social isolation and the resulting alienation from one another, may lead to said mental health issues. “It is really easy to get polarized into thinking that you don’t matter at all,” he says.
This concept of mattering has been examined by York professors to assess one’s mental health. Gordon Flett, professor of psychology, created the Anti-Mattering Scale (AMS): a tool that measures the feeling of mattering and how it relates to a person’s mental health. His findings have been used to highlight the importance of mattering to the mental health of post-secondary students and adolescents.
“In a 2019 paper, we argued that promoting feelings of mattering is essential in terms of the mental health of university students. It is important for students to know that they are valued and people care about them as individuals.”
The AMS scores patients using four criteria: the sense that other people depend on them, the perception that other people regard them as important, the realization that other people are actively paying attention to them, and the feeling that other people would miss them if they were no longer around, according to a Yfile article.
Flett recognizes mattering as crucial in relation to the other basic human psychological needs of competence, autonomy, and connection. “People who feel like they don’t matter to others also have less satisfaction of the three core needs of competence, autonomy, and connection. All of this points to not mattering being linked with low life satisfaction,” he states.
Flett has also found that mattering and the concept of self-esteem are inter-connected, saying that “the need to matter is unique and relevant to just about everyone. For some people, it is their most important need and it defines their sense of self and identity.”
In particular, adolescents and older adults are most affected by the need to matter. Marginalized groups and visible minorities also experience the need to matter differently; an earlier study by Flett demonstrated that feelings of not-mattering predict depression in young people from China. “It is especially important to develop a sense of mattering among people who might have had experiences that lead them to feel marginalized,” Flett says.
While mattering is an aspect of psychology that requires more research, Joel Goldberg, co-author of the study and associate professor of psychology, says that there is a “growing recognition of the importance of mattering in understanding people’s need to feel listened to, that their lives matter.” His work on the study also covered how mattering affects the mental health of students living in residence. He discovered that those that scored higher on the AMS were more prone to mental health problems than those who didn’t.
As the pandemic continues to affect students’ mental health, Flett emphasizes that it is important for people to feel that they matter in order to feel more satisfied with their life.
“It is important for students to know that they are valued, and people care about them as individuals. No one likes to feel like they are a number, or they are invisible. Students will also thrive academically if they know that they matter. For some people, it is their most important need and it defines their sense of self and identity.”
