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Objective

To assess the net impact of purpose in life on all-cause mortality and cardiovascular events.

Methods

The electronic databases PubMed, Embase, and PsycINFO were systematically searched through June 2015 to identify all studies investigating the relationship between purpose in life, mortality, and cardiovascular events. Articles were selected for inclusion if, a) they were prospective, b) evaluated the association between some measure of purpose in life and all-cause mortality and/or cardiovascular events, and c) unadjusted and/or adjusted risk estimates and confidence intervals (CIs) were reported.

Results

Ten prospective studies with a total of 136,265 participants were included in the analysis. A significant association was observed between having a higher purpose in life and reduced all-cause mortality (adjusted pooled relative risk= 0.83 [CI= 0.75–0.91], p<. 001) and cardiovascular events (adjusted …