The role of value priorities and valued living on depression and anxiety among young people: A cross-sectional study

Background: There is a growing interest in research examining the role of personal values in mental health. This study aims to investigate the relationship between value priorities and both depression and anxiety while exploring whether valued living is a better predictor of these variables compared to value priorities in a youth sample.
Methods: A total of 335 young people aged 16–25 (Mage = 17.92, SD = 2.59) from the United Kingdom completed measures assessing value priorities, valued living, depression, and anxiety, alongside demographic information.
Results: Values with both growth and personal focus orientations (i.e., Openness-to-Change) had stronger associations with depression and anxiety. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that valued living predicted depression and anxiety over value priorities, explaining more variance in depression compared to anxiety. Value priorities explained additional variance over valued living only for anxiety, but not for depression.
Conclusions: The findings indicate the importance from a public health and clinical perspective of enabling people to identify their values and facilitating them to live in a manner that is consistent with those values.