Investigating the Mediating Role of Meaning of Life in the Relationship between Depression, Family Emotional Atmosphere, and Suicidal Ideation in Drug-Addicted Women

The purpose of this study is to investigate the mediating role of Meaning of life in the relationship between depression, emotional atmosphere in the family, and suicidal ideation in drug-dependent women. The research method was applied and descriptive-correlational. The target population was all drug-addicted women in Ahvaz and the number of available samples was 180. According to the available sampling method, 149 subjects were finally included in the study. In the present study, descriptive and inferential statistical methods were used to analyze the data, skewness and elongation were used to determine the normality of the data, and path analysis was employed to evaluate the proposed model. The research instruments were Suicide Thought Questionnaire (SIS) by Mohammadifar et al. (2005), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II), Hillburn Family Emotional Questionnaire (FEA), and Stiger and Oshi's Meaning of Life Questionnaire (MLQ). SPSS 25 and AMOS 25 software were used. In the proposed model, the variables of suicidal ideation were considered as criterion variables and the variables of family emotional atmosphere and depression were considered as predictor variables. The results show that in the hypothesized model, all direct paths to suicidal ideation, except for family emotional atmosphere, were significant at the p<0.01 level. Indirect pathways were also significant with suicidal ideation through the meaning of life as a mediator variable. Based on the results of the study, the proposed model of the relationship between depression and emotional atmosphere of the family mediated by the meaning of life and suicidal ideation has a good fit, and this model is very important to identify effective factors in suicidal ideation of drug addicted women.