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One of the fundamental purposes of the human being is to develop a full and meaningful life. Among the main sources to achieve this meaning in life is social support.  Meaning in life is essential because, in addition contributes to achieving resilient coping with adversities that occur throughout life. This is a relevant research issue for social work and other social sciences. It involved 1,500 participants from Argentina, Colombia, Spain and Indonesia, who completed a booklet comprising Morgan and Farsides' (2009a, 2009b) Meaningful Life Measure (MLM), the Medical Outcome Study-Social Support Survey (MOS-SSS) by Sherbourne and Stewart (1991) and Connor-Davidson’s (2003) Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). The scales used have good psychometric properties. The factor analysis finds a five-factor structure for the meaning in life scale and two factors for the social support scale, while the resilience scale behaves as a unifactorial one. The structural model shows that social support influences both meaning in life and resilience in the face of adversity. A direct influence of social support on resilience is also observed.

Kirk Lougheed has argued that the Objective Meaningful Life Argument establishes a type of anti-theism, the view that a theistic God’s existence would make things worse and thus it’s rational to prefer that God not exist. The objective version of this argument is said to be an improvement over my subjective version of the Meaningful Life Argument. I argue that Lougheed’s version fares no better than the subjective version. Selon Kirk Lougheed, favoriser une version objective de l’argument du sens de la vie (Meaningful Life Argument) établit une sorte d’antithéisme, c’est-à-dire une perspective qui maintient que l’existence d’un Dieu théiste aggraverait les choses et qu’il est donc plus rationnel de préférer que Dieu n’existe pas. Cette version objective est présentée par Lougheed comme une amélioration par rapport à ma version subjective de l’argument du sens de la vie. Je soutiens que la version de Lougheed ne réussit pas mieux que la version subjective que j’ai développée, puis rejetée.

How can education contribute to human flourishing? In our previous work, we have argued that transformative methods of teaching and learning are the most compelling available for advancing the flourishing of young people in the classroom. Although the idea of an education for flourishing has been the topic of some controversy in the last few years, with some scholars forcefully defending and some rejecting the notion as a guiding aim of education, much of this discussion has occurred at a high level of abstraction, focusing on the philosophical foundations and ethical implications of flourishing as a concept. Parallel to this debate, there has been growing interest in an approach to education based on a popular course at Yale University called the “Life Worth Living” Framework, which has a stated focus on offering guidance to students for “defining and then creating a flourishing life.” In this paper, we engage with the Life Worth Living framework, as it presents a provocative case study for examining the potential risks and rewards of educational programs designed to foster students’ flourishing. At the same time, the framework raises important questions about what it means to teach for flourishing, since the way it understands how flourishing is advanced operates on several philosophical premises that, to our minds, deserve closer examination. ¿Cómo puede contribuir la educación al florecimiento humano? En nuestro artículo anterior, argumentamos que los métodos de enseñanza y aprendizaje transformadores son los más eficaces y convincentes para promover el florecimiento de los jóvenes en el aula. Si bien la idea de una educación orientada al florecimiento ha sido objeto de cierta controversia en los últimos años —con algunos académicos defendiéndola enérgicamente y otros rechazándola como objetivo pedagógico orientativo—, gran parte de este debate se ha desarrollado en un alto nivel de abstracción, centrado en los fundamentos filosóficos y las implicaciones éticas del florecimiento como concepto. Paralelamente a este debate, ha ido creciendo el interés por un enfoque educativo basado en un curso popular de la Universidad de Yale titulado Life Worth Living (Una vida que merezca la pena ser vivida), cuyo objetivo declarado es ofrecer orientación a los alumnos para «definir y posterior-mente construir una vida floreciente». En este artículo nos centraremos en dicho enfoque, puesto que representa un estudio de caso sugerente para determinar los posibles riesgos y recompensas de los programas educativos orientados al florecimiento de los alumnos. Al mismo tiempo, el enfoque plantea importantes cuestiones sobre lo que significa enseñar para el florecimiento, ya que la forma de entender cómo se promueve este proceso se basa en varias premisas filosóficas que, en nuestra opinión, merecen un examen más detenido.

As soon as a patient comes to know that he/she has cancer, the stress starts and psychological intervention is required. The authors assessed how well a cancer patient can manage stress over the course of the psychological intervention. Data was collected among 107 patients during pre and post intervention and at 2 months follow-up. Intervention was required to measures include acceptance of the disease, managing stress, well -being, and meaning of life. Finally, effects of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) were defined in acceptance measured in terms of a significant difference between pre and post intervention scores in the meaning of life and the acceptance level. This acceptance and commitment therapy can be an effective intervention approach for cancer patients that increases acceptance regarding disease and simultaneously leads to improvement in the meaning of life.

An authoethnography explores the lived experiences of patients being in control and self-managing their chronic illness among their families and friends. Findings show that the current health discourse narrows down people to mere patients and gives rise to tensions. This article indicates that people with one or several chronic illnesses or disabilities are first of all full citizens with needs, values, and drives seeking a meaningful life. Fair possibilities ought to exist to satisfy their needs to belong, to care for and to matter to others since these constitute an essential aspect of being human.

Why is life worth living? What makes actions right or wrong? What is reality and how do we know it? The Brain and the Meaning of Life draws on research in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to answer some of the most pressing questions about life's nature and value. Paul Thagard argues that evidence requires the abandonment of many traditional ideas about the soul, free will, and immortality, and shows how brain science matters for fundamental issues about reality, morality, and the meaning of life. The ongoing Brain Revolution reveals how love, work, and play provide good reasons for living.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of chronic illness on a couple’s life experiences over a period of 40 years. It critically examines the assumptions of the public health discourse in the light of this couple’s attempts to balance love and health care within their relationship. Design/methodology/approach The couple, the first two authors, put themselves under the magnifying glass. They arranged for a dialogic encounter and built a co-constructed auto-ethnography. This study consists of a “raw” narrative and a reflection. This reflexive part was added by the third author, interpreting the couple’s experiences applying in a sociocultural way theories of ethical care. This sheds light on ethical care aspects encountered in the couple’s balancing of love and health care. Findings This study shows that the couple copes with adversity rather than being in control of it. Nonetheless their love relationship appears to be flourishing, thanks to their acknowledgement of the importance of mutual caring. Research limitations/implications The current public health discourse puts the couple’s private love relationship under pressure. It turns a blind eye towards the difficulties they experience with the contemporary “self-management” paradigm. The couple feels that the government is an interloper intruding into their private relationship. This creates tension, friction, anxiety, as well as increasing the burden of the illness and makes them feel insecure and unsafe. Originality/value The novel method used in this study offers a rare and deep insight.

The 23-item Meaningful Life Measure (Morgan and Farsides 2008 ) comprises five subscales, each designed to assess a distinct component of personal meaning: purposeful life; valued life; accomplished life; principled life; and exciting life. In addition to providing a comprehensive composite meaning measure, this instrument presents the possibility of measuring these components separately in future research applications. To demonstrate the utility of their separate measurement, the present study therefore aimed to show differential patterns of correlation between these five subscales and meaning correlates identified in the literature. The MLM’s factor structure and internal reliability were replicated on the present sample. Evidence was then provided for the MLM’s convergent validity, and it was demonstrated that its five subscales were indeed differently predicted by the meaning correlates from the literature. Findings attest to the practical utility of a five-factor conceptualisation of meaning in life. In addition to identifying people who score low and high on different factors of meaning in life, the MLM facilitates the further investigation of specific antecedents and consequences of different meaning components.

To describe leaders' perspectives on what is important to create a meaningful daily life for older persons receiving municipal elderly care. This study combined the Participatory Appreciative Action Reflection approach and qualitative methods. Focus Group Discussions were performed with eighty leaders that was analysed with qualitative content analysis. One overall theme emerged \"We have to turn a transatlantic liner\". The leaders proposed a need to change from an institutional care to a more person-centered care approach on all levels of the healthcare system. This meant that everyone in the organization needed to think outside the box and find new ways to provide care to older persons. They needed to hire the right persons with the right values and knowledge. The leaders would need to provide for and support staff empowerment. There was also a need to see the older person and their relatives as co-participants. No Patient or Public Contribution.

La búsqueda de la felicidad es la expli-cación más general del comportamiento humano. A lo largo de los años se ha in-tentado establecer enfoques de medición que faciliten su análisis. Un primer paso es la necesidad de entender el bienestar de las personas a través de la idea de “sen-tirse mejor” que ha llevado a la medición de la salud subjetiva y no sólo biológica. Este artículo pretende comprender mejor los orígenes del concepto de felicidad del consumidor, sus enfoques y las escalas de medición. Para ello, se ha aplicado una metodología basada en la revisión de la literatura más reciente, identificando los análisis más relevantes del concepto. Esta investigación muestra el creciente uso del concepto de felicidad del consu-midor y la creación de diversas escalas de medición de la felicidad. A partir de es-tas ideas, se propone la utilización de un modelo que aproxima los tres enfoques constituyentes del concepto holístico de felicidad: una vida agradable, significativa y comprometida, que puede facilitar su aplicabilidad en entornos de gestión. The pursuit of happiness is the most gen-eral explanation of human behavior. Over the years, attempts have been made to establish measurement approaches to facilitate its analysis. A first step is the need to understand people’s well-being through the idea of “feeling better”, which has led to the measurement of subjective and not only biological health. This pa-per aims to better understand the origins of the concept of consumer happiness, its approaches and the measurement scales. To this end, a methodology based on a review of the most recent literature has been applied, identifying the most relevant analyses of the concept. This research shows the growing use of the concept of consumer happiness, and the creation of various scales for measuring happiness. Based on these ideas, we pro-pose the use a model that approximates the three constituent approaches of the holistic concept of happiness: an enjoya-ble, meaningful and committed life, which can facilitate its applicability in manage-ment environments