Objective: Increasing meaning in life (MiL) among people experiencing disease or adversity may improve coping and resilience. The purpose of this review is to characterize the effects of MiL interventions. Data Source: A systematic search of PubMed, PsycInfo, and Google Scholar was conducted encompassing the following parameters: meaning in life, purpose in life, or sense of purpose with randomized controlled trials. Study Inclusion & Exclusion Criteria: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of interventions with at least one outcome that measured improvement in MiL and were published in English between January 2000 and January 2020. Data Extraction & Synthesis: 33 randomized controlled trials ( k = 35) were identified. Data were coded by authors and a research assistant for intervention type, control group type, and risk of bias. The random effects model of Review Manager 5.3 was used to produce SMD and evaluate heterogeneity. Results: The effect size for studies with a passive control group was SMD = 0.85 (95% CI 0.54 to 1.17) and for studies with an active control group was SMD = .032 (95% CI 0.09 to 0.55). Mindfulness programs produced the largest effect size (1.57) compared to passive controls, while narrative programs produced the largest effect relative to active controls (0.61). There was considerable heterogeneity in most estimates. Conclusion: Several interventions increase MiL, including some that are relatively brief and do not require licensed professionals.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a demanding caregiving context for parents, particularly during lockdowns. In this study, we examined parental mentalization, parents’ proclivity to consider their own and their child’s mental states, during the pandemic, as manifested in mental-state language (MSL) on parenting social media. Parenting-related posts on Reddit from two time periods in the pandemic in 2020, March to April (lockdown) and July to August (postlockdown), were compared with time-matched control periods in 2019. MSL and self–other references were measured using text-analysis methods. Parental mentalization content decreased during the pandemic: Posts referred less to mental activities and to other people during the COVID-19 pandemic and showed decreased affective MSL, cognitive MSL, and self-references specifically during lockdown. Father-specific subreddits exhibited strongest declines in mentalization content, whereas mother-specific subreddits exhibited smaller changes. Implications on understanding associations between caregiving contexts and parental mentalization, gender differences, and the value of using social-media data to study parenting and mentalizing are discussed.