Perceived Belongingness

Within each of us, there is a basic need to feel that we belong. This need arises from a biological imperative. Being in and staying in the “group” enhances our survival. From an evolutionary perspective, ostracism often meant an early demise.

What happens when a sense of belonging is thwarted? Believing that you are an outsider, or that you are at risk for becoming one, is likely to broadly impact our two most prevalent psychiatric conditions – anxiety and depression. Indeed, Thomas Joiner posited that thwarted belongingness is one key component to understanding the motivation for suicide (2007), and this construct has been extensively studied in the context of depression and suicide. What’s been less studied is the role or impact of thwarted belongingness on anxiety. This is unfortunate because belongingness is likely to be of extreme import to understanding certain forms of anxiety.

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Perceiving that you are likely to be cast out of the social system produces dread and fear. While managing social networks is highly adaptive, too much concern about social safety is problematic. In the most extreme, social evaluation concerns and unrealistic perceptions of belonging are likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy of increasing social isolation.

Psychologists have long recognized the importance of human connection, and various psychotherapies have been developed to specifically target interpersonal factors. For example, McCullough’s (2000) cognitive behavioral analysis system of psychotherapy as well as interpersonal psychotherapy focus enhancing interpersonal skills and fixing social disruptions. Our research group has been interested in an even more targeted (as well as brief) form of intervention that attempts to correct erroneous beliefs about belongingness. Such beliefs might include ideas like “If I’m around others, I shouldn’t feel isolated” or “Time spent on social media is a good substitute for live relationships.” We use a web-based approach to deliver educational materials and build skills relevant to social connectedness. In a study now in press focused on military Veterans, we found that this very brief intervention (lasting less than one hour) can improve interpersonal risk factors such as thwarted belongingness. Importantly, these changes appear to have positive changes on both anxiety and mood symptoms, including suicide (Short, Stentz, Raines, Boffa, & Schmidt, in press).

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While brief, web approaches to correcting underlying risk factors for anxiety and mood problems are promising, these interventions are not the complete solution to the problem. However, within a stepped care approach to mental health, brief, online interventions have many benefits including being low cost (or free) as well as being rapidly scalable and easily disseminated. Moreover, brief online interventions designed to improve social connections could help people to feel more ready to engage in more intensive forms of treatment, or could complement existing treatments. We are really just at the beginning stages of incorporating interventions for interpersonal factors in most of our treatment approaches, particularly for many forms of anxiety psychopathology. A focus on such factors, however, is likely to enhance our capacity to prevent and treat these conditions.