Logotherapy: A Meaning Centered Suicide Treatment

Mental health issues make up for a significant portion of deaths and disabilities each year. Suicide is currently among the top five causes of death in people under the age of fifty-five (NIMH » Suicide, 2020). Suicidality within any given individual can be linked with a multiplicity of potential factors such as physical illness, mental illness, hopelessness, and substance abuse (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2020). Among the multiplicity of potential variables that may serve to lead an individual to suicide, there are just as many preventative and protective factors. 

The existential psychologists have noted that, among the various factors targeted for suicide prevention, perceived meaning in life provides a reasonable basis for predicting treatment outcomes (Debats, 1996, p. 504). Those who ascribed meaning to their lives and experiences had predictably lower rates of psychological distress than their counterparts who thought their lives were meaningless (Debats, 1996, p. 510). 

Logotherapy emphasizes the individual in their entirety and attempts to excite the will to meaning, removing any impediments or frustrations placed on the will (Frankl, 2014, pp. 13). Since logotherapy is used in deliberately targeting the will to meaning as to amplify and disinhibit the will (Frankl, 2014, pp. 45–48) and we know that the rate of meaning in an individuals life is an influential predictive factor in managing psychological distress and therapeutic outcomes, logotherapy could then be held to be a reliable clinical practice maintaining both relevance and real-world effectiveness (Schulenberg et al., 2008, p. 448).

Logotherapy is based primarily on the philosophical school of existentialism and thus concerns itself with human universals, lending itself, by the very nature of its composition, to a timeless relevance and effectiveness. The universal nature of the approach allows logotherapy to encompass and account for the varieties of human experience, allowing the methods to be co-opted into any treatment plan. Logotherapy tends to work incredibly well in conjunction with cognitive behavioral therapy, one of the most extensive therapeutic disciplines (Ameli & Dattilio, 2013).

Most importantly, the emphasis on providing all individuals with an excited and active will to meaning seems to be applicable for any individual regardless of their circumstances. Logotherapy has been shown to be effective for a wide variety of people from different groups and backgrounds (Debats, 1996; Rahgozar & Giménez-Llort, 2020) and has been effective in treating those who suffer from depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. These findings are likely due to the fact that the practice itself grew and became effective under the specter of the concentration camp (Frankl, 2020), arguably, the most adverse settings an individual could endure.

The practice having been effective for those who had the least of all, it seems likewise to work for those who find themselves in less severe circumstances. Logotherapy’s tortured upbringing and insistence on the will to meaning provide us ample reasons to think that logotherapy will continue to maintain clinical relevance and real-world effectiveness long into the future so long as human universals exist.