Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

The Search for Meaning

Finding Meaning in Suffering

Patrick Testa on the extraordinary hope offered by Viktor Frankl.

Psychiatric illnesses are on the rise around the world, weighing heavily on health systems already presenting barriers to access. Children and young people in particular face worsening mental health. Depression, self-harm, and suicide are occurring more frequently and at a younger age in adolescents than ever before. What can be done to alleviate this? And with all the suffering in the world, others are asking a different question: Why?

The psychiatrist Viktor Frankl stated in Man’s Search for Meaning (1946) that life is never made unbearable by circumstances, only by lack of purpose. He argued that when we struggle to find meaning in our lives when confronted with adversity, our mental health suffers, leaving a void that contributes to depression and other conditions.

…