By the time a seventeen-year-old from a rural school messages me, “I’m doing everything they told me to do. Why do I still feel empty?”, it’s already clear that I am not just reading an academic or financial problem. I am staring at a question about meaning.

Globally, about one in seven adolescents (10–19) lives with a mental disorder, accounting for roughly 15% of the global burden of disease in this age group (UNICEF, 2021; WHO, 2025). Depression and anxiety are now leading causes of illness and disability, and suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people aged 15–29 (WHO, 2025).

Sri Lanka mirrors this crisis in its own way. Analysis of the 2016 Global School-based Health Survey found that 40.3% of Sri Lankan schoolgoing adolescents met criteria for mental health problems such as loneliness, anxiety and suicidal ideation (Rasalingam et al., 2022). More recent work suggests around a quarter of adolescents show clinically significant depressive symptoms and up to 60% report extremely high distress (Mudunna et al., 2025). Suicide is already the fourth leading cause of death among 15–19-year-olds, and services remain concentrated in urban tertiary centres (Rajapakshe, 2023).

We rightly call this a mental health crisis. But underneath the symptom language—depression, anxiety, self-harm—I keep encountering something quieter and harder to measure: a crisis of purpose.

Too many young people are over-schooled and under-guided. They know how to chase grades and survive exam culture. They have far fewer chances to ask: What kind of life do I actually want to build—for myself and for my community?

If we are serious about youth mental health, our policies cannot stop at clinics and awareness posters. We need to invest in meaning-making spaces: everyday environments where young people experience belonging, agency, contribution, and a sense that their lives are going somewhere that matters.

Purpose as Prevention: Why Youth Mental Health Policy Must Support Meaning-Making Spaces

In psychology, meaning-making is the process of interpreting experiences in light of our broader beliefs, goals, and identities. Crystal Park’s “meaning-making model” distinguishes between global meaning (big-picture beliefs about the world, ourselves, and our purpose) and situational meaning (how we interpret specific events); distress appears when events clash with global meaning, prompting “meaning-making efforts” to restore coherence (Park, 2010; Park, 2013). Narrative identity research shows that, especially in adolescence, young people do this through storytelling—linking past events to who they are and who they want to become—which is associated with better psychological functioning and stronger identity commitments (McAdams & McLean, 2013; van Doeselaar et al., 2020; de Moor et al., 2023). Meaning-making is not just internal; it happens in spaces—youth groups, classrooms, counselling sessions, community projects—where young people are invited to reflect, share their stories, and connect struggles to a larger purpose. Meaning-centered approaches to youth resilience intentionally design these “meaning-making spaces,” combining relationships, reflection, and purposeful action so that young people can discover what matters to them and use that as a buffer against distress (Wong & Wong, 2012; Wong, 2020; Yıldırım, 2025).

As the founder of The Strivers’ Network (TSN), I have slowly realised that this is, in practice, what much of our work has become.

The limits of a clinic-only and awareness-only response

In Sri Lanka, adolescent mental health services have expanded over the past two decades, but coverage is still limited and uneven (Rajapakshe, 2023). Specialized care tends to cluster in cities, and even where services exist, stigma, cost, and distance keep many teenagers away until crisis hits.

At the same time, our labour and education statistics reveal a second, quieter vulnerability. In 2016, 26.1% of Sri Lankan youth aged 15–24 were NEET—not in education, employment, or training—compared with a global average of 21.8% (Abayasekara, 2019). The female NEET rate was about 34.5%, more than double the male rate of 17% (IPS, 2019). International evidence shows that NEET status is associated with long-term “scarring” effects: unemployment, poverty, low civic participation, and elevated risk of mental illness (Abayasekara, 2019).

In other words, a large fraction of Sri Lankan youth are drifting outside the very institutions—schools, training centres, workplaces—that typically provide direction, identity, and social ties. This is not just an economic problem; it is a structural purposelessness problem.

Our dominant response tools are poorly matched to this reality. On the health side, we invest in psychiatric services that understandably focus on treating acute illness. On the education side, we often respond with deficit-framed awareness campaigns: assemblies about “stress management,” posters about depression, one-off talks that say “reach out if you need help.”

None of these are bad ideas. But a teenager can know the hotline number, recite the signs of depression, and still lie awake at 2 a.m. wondering whether their life means anything. Awareness does not automatically create meaning. You cannot poster your way out of an existential crisis.

What young people tell me, in TSN calls and WhatsApp messages, is that they are missing four things:

• Belonging – “Do I matter to anyone here?”
• Agency – “Can I actually change anything?”
• Contribution – “Does anything I do make a difference?”
• Coherence – “Can I make sense of my past, present, and future as one story?”

Those are exactly the ingredients of purpose.

Purpose as a protective factor

Psychologists often define purpose in life as a self-chosen, meaningful direction that organises goals and gives life a sense of significance. It is not a perfect ten-year plan; it is a strong “why”.

A growing body of research suggests that this “why” matters for mental health. Barcaccia and colleagues (2023), in a large study of Italian adolescents, found that a stronger sense of purpose was associated with lower depressive symptoms and higher self-reassurance, even when controlling for stress and demographics (Barcaccia et al., 2023). Other studies similarly find that adolescents with higher purpose report greater life satisfaction and well-being, and show lower levels of depression and anxiety over time (Chen & Cheng, 2020; Boreham & Schutte, 2023).

Purpose is closely intertwined with connectedness. Large-scale reviews show that feeling connected to school, family, and peers is a robust protective factor against depression and suicide risk in adolescence (Pastor et al., 2025). Work on school connectedness finds that students who feel their teachers and peers care about them show fewer internalising and externalising problems and better positive mental health, even after childhood adversity (Rose et al., 2024). The CDC now explicitly treats school connectedness as a key protective factor for adolescent mental health and multiple risk behaviours (CDC, 2024).

Put simply, when young people feel they belong somewhere, can contribute something, and are moving toward a self-endorsed future, they are less likely to drown in despair. Purpose does not remove exam stress, financial pressure or family conflict. But it changes how those struggles are interpreted—not as meaningless pain, but as part of a story they are choosing to live.

From what I have seen with Strivers, we cannot medicate or hashtag our way out of a meaning deficit. We need infrastructures that help young people build and rebuild purpose in community.

The Strivers’ Network as a meaning-making space

When I started The Strivers’ Network, I thought I was building an access pipeline: identifying talented students from under-resourced schools, connecting them to mentors, and helping them apply for scholarships and global universities.

Over time, it became obvious that something deeper was happening.

1. Narrative work, not just application work

When a student sits down with me to draft a personal statement, we rarely begin with “What sounds impressive?” Instead, we ask: What has actually shaped you? Where do you feel most alive? What responsibility won’t leave you alone?

For many Scholars, this is the first time anyone has invited them to treat their own life as a story worth understanding, not just a list of achievements. The process of writing forces them to connect past hardship, present choices, and future hopes into a coherent narrative. I have watched students move from “I’ve just been surviving” to “I’ve been taking care of my siblings since I was thirteen; maybe my leadership matters.”

That shift—seeing their life as meaningful, not accidental—is quietly therapeutic.

2. Community projects as laboratories of agency

TSN encourages Strivers to design gap-year and community projects: free tuition classes in estate communities, climate clubs, robotics workshops in village temples. These are not decorative volunteer hours for CVs; they are experiments in agency and contribution.

A student who spends six months teaching maths to younger children or running a digital literacy class in their village sees, with their own eyes, that they can change something in their immediate world. When they say, “If I don’t show up, the kids ask where I am,” they are telling me that their existence now has visible consequences. That is purpose.

3. Peer community and collective purpose

Our WhatsApp groups and late-night Zoom calls are messy, multilingual, and very human. Strivers confess to burnout, imposter syndrome, panic about disappointing their families. They share rejections and celebrate tiny wins.

What I see in those conversations is collective purpose forming. “I’m terrified too, but we are going to figure this out together.” “If I get this scholarship, I’m going to fund someone else’s application fee.” The network becomes a place where they are allowed to be vulnerable and ambitious at the same time.

Do not be fooled: TSN is not a mental health clinic. When a student is in crisis, we encourage and support referrals to professional care. But I have no doubt that TSN functions as a protective environment—exactly the kind of social and relational buffer that suicide-prevention research keeps emphasising (Rajapakshe, 2023; UNICEF, 2021)

What youth mental health policy can do with this insight

If we take seriously the idea that purpose, belonging, and agency are protective for young people, then youth mental health policy in Sri Lanka has to look beyond clinics and awareness drives. UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children 2021 already calls for cross-sector investment in education, social protection, and community-based interventions, not just health-sector services (UNICEF, 2021). Sri Lankan researchers similarly argue for “integrated approaches involving the individual, family and community” to promote positive home and school environments (Rasalingam et al., 2022).

From my vantage point in The Strivers’ Network, I see three realistic shifts that could embed “purpose as prevention” into policy and systems.

1. Create dedicated funding streams for youth-led meaning-making spaces

First, Sri Lanka needs recurring funding lines for youth-led programmes that build purpose, not only treat crisis. This could sit under the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, or Ministry of Youth Affairs, but the principle is the same: recognise organisations like TSN as part of the prevention infrastructure, not as optional add-ons.

A practical starting point would be a small-grants scheme for youth-led initiatives that:

provide mentoring and guidance for school-age and NEET youth;

run community projects that give young people visible roles and responsibilities;

create spaces for reflection and storytelling (clubs, forums, youth parliaments).

Grants do not need to be large; even modest, multi-year funding can stabilise programmes that currently survive on volunteer labour and ad hoc donations. To reach underserved districts, the scheme should prioritise organisations working beyond Colombo and explicitly encourage applications from young people themselves. Reporting requirements should be light but meaningful—short narratives, basic participation data, and simple indicators of belonging and hope.

2. Embed purpose exploration into the fabric of schools

Second, we can build on existing education reforms to make purpose exploration a normal part of schooling. International evidence shows that school connectedness—feeling cared for, respected, and part of the community—is strongly linked to lower depression and risk behaviours (CDC, 2024; Raniti et al., 2022). That is not a “luxury” outcome; it is central to mental health.

Rather than inventing a new subject, the Ministry of Education could:

Integrate project-based learning where students identify and tackle real community problems, even in small ways.

Introduce a short “Purpose & Pathways” module in lower and upper secondary grades, combining life-planning, values clarification, and exposure to diverse post-school options.

Encourage formal school–youth organisation partnerships, where networks like TSN and others run mentoring circles, storytelling sessions, or policy forums as part of the school calendar.

Guidelines and inspection frameworks can signal that schools will be supported and recognised not only for exam results, but also for creating environments where students feel they belong and can contribute. Importantly, these initiatives should be co-designed with students themselves; young people are experts in what makes school feel meaningful or deadening.

3. Measure what matters – and use it for improvement, not punishment

Finally, if “purpose as prevention” is to be taken seriously, our metrics have to expand. At the moment, success is usually tracked in terms of exam pass rates, university admissions, and maybe employment. For mental health, we sometimes add counts of hospital admissions or suicide rates. These are important, but they are late indicators.

We should also track leading indicators of wellbeing and purpose, such as:

students’ sense of belonging and safety at school;

access to at least one trusted adult or mentor;

participation in meaningful extracurricular or community projects;

perceived ability to influence something in their school or community.

These items can be embedded into periodic school climate surveys, existing adolescent health surveys, or new low-cost questionnaires administered at school or divisional level. The critical point is how the data are used: as a diagnostic tool to help schools and local authorities improve, not as a league table to shame or penalise already under-resourced institutions.

For organisations like TSN and our peers, being invited into this measurement conversation would also mean we can share anonymised programme data and qualitative insights back into the system, closing the loop between grassroots practice and national policy.

Taken together, these steps do not replace the need for better clinical services or crisis support. They complement them. By funding youth-led meaning-making spaces, embedding purpose exploration into schools, and measuring what truly matters for young people’s inner lives, Sri Lanka can move from a model of late-stage repair to one of genuine prevention.

Young people are meaning-makers, not machines

When I look across the faces of Strivers—on tiny Zoom tiles from across Sri Lanka—I do not see broken machines that need better tuning. I see meaning-makers: young people trying to stitch together childhood, crisis, duty, joy, and ambition into a life that feels worth living. Many of them carry labels like “high-achieving” or “gifted,” yet sit with the same quiet questions that haunt so many adolescents worldwide: Am I enough? Does any of this matter? In a world where one in seven adolescents is living with a mental disorder and suicide is among the leading causes of death in older teens, these questions are not abstract—they are matters of survival (UNICEF, 2021; WHO, 2025).

If we continue to treat youth as exam-taking machines to be optimised, we will keep producing impressive CVs attached to fragile souls. The research on purpose and mental health is clear: young people with a stronger sense of purpose show lower depressive symptoms and better overall well-being (Barcaccia et al., 2023). That tells me our job is not only to reduce symptoms, but to help them build a “why” that can hold under pressure.

If instead we recognise youth as meaning-makers, we will invest in the spaces where they can ask themselves, over and over: What do I owe myself, my community, and the world—and how do I want to show up? I believe that question, asked early and often in communities like TSN and beyond, might be one of the most powerful mental health interventions we have.

References

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