Gordon Flett

They're more engaged, less likely to get into trouble in terms of, you know, violent behavior or truancy.

And consistently you see with mattering, including research with young children,

that not only is there a sense of hope, there's a very strong sense of agency that I can make things happen, which is why it's a key factor in terms of promoting resilience and also adaptability, which we've shown in some of our work.

Oh, yes, I do.

I believe that if there's a societal focus on mattering,

That will shift population health.

First of all, it's important to point out that there's now about 10 studies that have shown that mattering is associated with the poor health in terms of self-rated, but also objective measures.

But I look at it in terms of how many people are out there feeling marginalized and feeling unimportant in society.

We know that community research done with surveys of children, United States that when asked, do you matter in the community?

about half of the young people say, I don't matter in the community.

And then it's worse if there's other forms of marginalization or stereotype or stigma.

So LGBTQ kids, it's about only one in three say I matter in the community.

And I said, until we address that as a basic indicator, we're going to see all kinds of problems emerging through either depression and mental health or some of the more violent episodes that are there.

And it doesn't take a lot.

That's what frustrates me about why we don't have more of a prevention mode.

It doesn't take a lot to go and change and give somebody a sense of mattering in society.

One person can literally change somebody's life in terms of this.

And we need to do this broadly.

And I had a colleague who was talking about, she sat in on a proposal for a giant resilience project and they were getting millions of dollars to do this.

She sat there listening and said,