Researchers wanted to explore how your way of thinking about time might explain the link between feeling like you belong to a group and your mental health.
Introduction
Have you ever felt worried about an upcoming test? Or sad because you didn’t do so well on that test? It’s normal to have these emotions. But if these feelings last for a while and get really bad, it could turn into anxiety or depression (Fig. 1). In today’s world, anxiety and depression are more and more common.
Psychologists often look at how people can prevent anxiety and depression from developing. Having a healthy balance of positive emotions can help. These contribute to good psychological well-being.
But what types of things can influence people’s emotions? One thing is feeling like you belong to a group. This is called having a sense of community. Community could include your family, friends, sports team, or even online gamer friends. Feeling supported and sharing connections with others can generate positive emotions.
Another thing that can impact our emotions is how we think about our past, present and future experiences. You might not realize it, but we all view these moments in time in different ways. This is called our time perspective. Sometimes, we look back at our memories and think happy thoughts, and sometimes we look back and have sad thoughts. This happens when we think about our present and future, too. Thoughts can be happy, sad or somewhere in the middle. A balanced time perspective is when people combine positive aspects from their past, present and future. They also think about the past, present and future equally instead of focusing on just one. Having a balanced time perspective can help develop good psychological well-being.
A sense of community and a person’s time perspective are both important to mental health. But we don’t really know how they interact with each other. For example, if someone doesn’t feel like they belong in a group, does that mean they feel more anxious? Are these feelings different if the person always thinks negatively about the future? These were the kinds of questions we wanted to explore.
Methods
We asked 352 people from an Italian community to take part in our study. They ranged from 18–86 years old, with an average age of about 35.
We asked participants to answer questions from three different surveys. We used these surveys to measure:
their levels of anxiety, depression, and stress;
how connected they felt to a group (sense of community); and
whether they had a balanced or unbalanced time perspective.
Then we used a statistical model to see if time perspective explained the link between a sense of community and psychological well-being.
Results
We found that people with a stronger sense of community felt better. They had lower stress, depression, and anxiety. We saw the same thing in people with a more balanced time perspective (Figure 2).
Our model showed that a person’s time perspective is important when looking at their sense of community. We found that it explained 44% of the link between a sense of community and both anxiety and depression. It also explained 25% of the link with stress. This is like being able to do your weekly grocery shopping in a half hour. And 44% of the reason you can do it in that time is because you made a list. To understand why you are so good at grocery shopping you have to understand how making a list helps you shop!
Discussion
A strong sense of community is essential to good mental health. Our results confirm this for a wide range of people. More importantly, the strength of this link is related to a person’s time perspective. For example, people who have a strong connection to their community have less anxiety, depression, and stress. This relationship might change if people have a more or less balanced sense of time.
What does this actually mean? Let’s say that you have a great group of friends. You do lots of things together and you trust them. They make you feel less stressed. Let’s also say that you generally think things in the future will not be as good as the past. Now, imagine that you are trying to plan your next birthday party. You don’t think there is any way this next birthday will be as good as the last, even though your friends will be there. This increases your stress. Your view of time is impacting your stress level, even though you have a strong sense of community.
People look back on the past and make decisions for the future. They do this while considering the people in their lives. Time perspective and sense of community are both important to psychological well-being. Programs should be created to teach people about these aspects of mental health. In the future, we would like to expand this work to more people and more diverse communities. This will help us better understand how to improve mental health.
Conclusion
Life is full of creating memories, living in the moment, and looking forward to the future. Now you know how we think about these moments in time also impacts how we feel. Thinking about the past, present and future with a balance of positive emotions helps to support good mental health.
If you ever start to have feelings of sadness or worry that prevent you from doing the things you love, here are some suggestions:
Talk to your friends or a trusted adult about your feelings. If that feels too hard, you could look up a local helpline and talk to a volunteer.
Plan to do things with your community.
Practice mindfulness.
Maintain a healthy lifestyle. For example, eat well and get enough sleep.
