Marie Vildhammar Okker

Short presentation

I am a doctoral student in psychology of religion with a focus on existential health.

Keywords

• psychology of religion
• existential health
• young people

Research

If Crisis or Hope Comes: Young People’s Existential Challenges and Resources in Relation to Existential Health and Resilience

Young people in contemporary Sweden grow up in a time marked by crisis and uncertainty. Alongside this, we see increasing levels of mental health problems among young people and a growing awareness that well-being cannot be fully understood in terms of symptoms and social conditions. It also involves existential dimensions – such as meaning, belonging, hope, and trust in the future. This is the starting point for my doctoral project If Crisis or Hope Comes: Young People’s Existential Challenges and Resources, which I began as part of my four-year doctoral studies in autumn 2025. The project has now received ethical approval, allowing the empirical co-production of knowledge to begin. 

Purpose and objectives

The aim of the mixed-methods doctoral project is twofold:

1. to understand how young people, 15-25, themselves experience and navigate existential challenges,
2. to examine how interventions, in the form of non-clinical dialogue group processes, can strengthen existential health.

Entering the project, I do not apply a fixed definition of existential health, although key perspectives mentioned in relation to existential questions and health are experiences of meaning and purpose in life, connectedness, coherence and sense of safety, as well as feelings of being a part of something greater and being able to share existential questions with others (la Cour, 2025; Folkhälsomyndigheten, 2025; Nygaard et al., 2022).

Practice-near methodology

This doctoral project is conducted in close connection with various non-clinical initiatives aimed at supporting and strengthening young people’s existential health. Examples include Meningen med mig (The meaning of me), Existens (Existence), and Snacka om livet (Let's about life). These initiatives are not situated in clinical settings; rather, they operate in everyday, community-based contexts. What they share is a commitment to offering young people language, relationships, and safe spaces in which existential questions can be explored collectively. Methodologically, the project begins with listening.

Accordingly, the first and most crucial phase of the study is qualitative and based on interviews and observations. This phase seeks to engage with young people’s existential life-worlds.

Findings from the first phase inform the selection of measurement instruments for the quantitative phase, which examines intervention (i.e. dialogue group) effects. A final qualitative phase focuses on processes of change: how and why the dialogue group makes a difference from the perspective of the participants.

Theoretical framework and key concepts

The project integrates existential psychology (Yalom 1980; van Deurzen, 1997) and individual psychology (Adler, 2023/[1931]) with contemporary research on existential health, meaning, coping and resilience (Ungar, 2008; la Cour & Hvidt, 2010; Lloyd, 2018; Schnell & Danbolt 2023; Zandi & Ahmadi, 2024; la Cour, 2025).

• Existential health is approached as an open and contested concept, attentive to secular, spiritual and religious expressions, and to critiques of medicalization and individualized responsibility. Here, the study examines how existential health is shaped through spaces for existential communication.
• Resilience is understood not as individual trait, but as a relational and socio-culturally embedded process, shaped by social environments, material conditions, norms and power relations.

Expected contributions

This doctoral project is expected to contribute knowledge of young people’s existential expressions and needs in turbulent times. It responds to articulated needs for qualitative studies that analyze how young people relate to, interpret and reshape religion in their surroundings (Westerlund & Schumann, 2019). The project complements previous research in the psychology of religion on young people’s existential meaning-making in secular Sweden.

References

Adler, A. (2023). What life should mean to you. Victoria: Must Have Books. (Original work published 1931.)

DeMarinis, V. (2024). Current Research Methodological Challenges and Opportunities Related to Public Mental Health Promotion and Existential Meaning- an Emerging Framework. I: Doing Multidisciplinary Research on Religion. Brill, p. 162–184. https://brill.com/display/book/9789004677791/BP000019.xml.

Folkhälsomyndigheten (2025). Existentiell hälsa och folkhälsa – Slutredovisning. https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/publikationer-och-material/publikationsarkiv/e/existentiell-halsa-och-folkhalsa-slutredovisning/

la Cour, P. (2025). Introducing Existential Health: The Four-Dimensional Model. London: Routledge.

la Cour, P. & Hvidt, N. C. (2010). Research on meaning-making and health in secular society: Secular, spiritual and religious existential orientations. Social science & medicine (1982), 71(7), p. 1292–1299, doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.06.024.

Lloyd, C. (2018). Moments of meaning – Towards an assessment of protective and risk factors for existential vulnerability among young women with mental ill-health concerns: a mixed methods project in clinical psychology of religion and existential health. [Dissertation, Uppsala University.] Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Uppsala.

Nygaard, M. R., Austad, A., Sørensen, T., Synnes, O., & McSherry, W. (2022). ‘Existential’ in Scandinavian Healthcare Journals: An Analysis of the Concept and Implications for Future Research. Religions, 13(10), 979. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13100979

Schnell, T., & Danbolt, L. J. (2023). The Meaning and Purpose Scales (MAPS): Development and multi-study validation of short measures of meaningfulness, crisis of meaning, and sources of purpose. BMC Psychology, 11(1), 304. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-023-01319-8

Ungar, M. (2008). Resilience across Cultures. The British Journal of Social Work, 38(2), p. 218–235, doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcl343.

van Deurzen, E. (1997). Everyday mysteries. Existential Dimensions of Psychotherapy. London: Routledge.

Westerlund, K. & Schumann, Å. (2019). Religion och existentiell hälsa hos unga svenskar. In: Klingenberg, M., & Lövheim, M. (eds.) Unga och religion. Troende, ointresserade eller neutrala. 1 ed., p. 127–146, Malmö: Gleerups.

Yalom, I. D. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. Basic Books.

Zandi, S. & Ahmadi, F. (2024). Religious/Spiritual Coping and Secular Existential Coping. I: Handbook of Concepts in Health, Health Behavior and Environmental Health. Springer, Singapore, p. 1–33. https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-981-97-0821-5_24- 1.