The issue of young people’s existential situation in the 21st century is taking on particular significance. Societal changes, linked mainly to the development of digitalisation and technology, present the individual with a difficult challenge – how to ‘be’ in a reality of all-encompassing consumption and in cyberspace, which is fraught with dangers and ethical dilemmas. There is a visible decline in universal values alongside the promotion of hedonistic and short-term values, as well as a growing moral, legal and religious relativism.
The subject of this presentation is the issue of existential attitudes and mental health among university students. The research aims to determine the intensity of existential attitudes among Polish students and whether there is a correlation – and, if so, what kind – between mental health and the attitudes exhibited by the respondents. Tools such as R. Klamut’s Life Attitudes Questionnaire and D. Goldberg’s GHQ-28 were used. The study group consists of several hundred students (the research is currently ongoing).
The research findings will present the intensity of existential attitudes, their specific characteristics in relation to general mental health and its individual components (somatic symptoms, levels of anxiety and insomnia, symptoms of depression, and functional impairments) . Furthermore, statistical analyses will be conducted to identify the main correlates and determinants, including socio-demographic factors, of the examined existential attitudes. The discussion will involve a verification of the hypotheses put forward and an analysis of the results obtained in the context of research by other authors.
Existential attitudes and the mental health of Polish students