The research, published in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, draws on terror management theory, a framework inspired by the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker. According to this theory, humans cope with the terror of mortality by embedding themselves in cultural worldviews, cultivating self-esteem, and forming secure attachments to others. These psychological buffers give people a sense that they are meaningful, valued, and connected to something larger and more lasting than their individual lives. Among the most important of these defenses is symbolic immortality: the conviction that one’s name, accomplishments, or legacy will persist in the memories of others after death.

Despite the theoretical prominence of symbolic immortality, no study had ever tested whether it is systematically linked to mental health and addictive behavior. To fill this gap, a team led by Uri Lifshin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Israel Center for Addiction and Mental Health analyzed data from 2,912 Jewish Israeli adults. The sample was quasi-representative of the adult Jewish population in terms of gender, age, religiosity, and area of residence, and the data were collected in February 2025, during the Swords of Iron war—a period of acute collective threat in which mortality was anything but abstract.

Participants completed a comprehensive battery of validated instruments. Problematic substance use was assessed with the World Health Organization’s ASSIST screening test, covering alcohol, cannabis, sedatives, prescription stimulants, and opioid painkillers. Behavioral addictions were measured with established scales for gambling, problematic pornography use, sex addiction, gaming, social media, and internet use. Psychological problems were captured through the PCL-5 for post-traumatic stress, the GAD-7 for anxiety, the PHQ-9 for depression, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, and the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale. Crucially, symbolic immortality was measured with a single, deceptively simple question: do you think you will be remembered by other people after you die, for example through your accomplishments or legacy?

The results were strikingly consistent. People who believed they would be remembered reported significantly higher self-esteem, greater perceived social support, stronger national identification, stronger belief in God, and a greater sense of meaning in life. They also reported lower attachment anxiety and avoidance, the two insecure dimensions of close relationships. In other words, symbolic immortality behaved exactly as terror management theory predicts a successful anxiety buffer should: it traveled alongside every major psychological resource theorized to protect people from death-related fear.

More remarkable were the associations with clinical outcomes. Stronger belief in symbolic immortality correlated with lower levels of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress symptoms, as well as fewer sleep disturbances and emotion-regulation difficulties. It was also linked to less problematic use of alcohol, cannabis, and prescription drugs, and to lower severity of gambling, pornography, sex, gaming, social media, and internet addictions. These relationships held even after the researchers statistically controlled for gender, education, political orientation, military service, relationship status, parental status, and—importantly—belief in an afterlife.

That last control proved theoretically decisive. Belief in literal immortality, such as faith in heaven or reincarnation, is the religious cousin of symbolic immortality, and the two constructs were moderately correlated in the sample. Yet their psychological profiles diverged sharply. Afterlife belief was strongly tied to religiosity and belief in God but only weakly related to self-esteem, unrelated to attachment anxiety, and essentially unrelated to any measure of psychological distress. It showed only scattered negative associations with addictions and was even positively associated with problematic internet use. Symbolic immortality, by contrast, was consistently and broadly protective. Being remembered by others, it seems, does psychological work that merely believing in heaven does not.

The authors interpret these findings through the lens of anxiety buffer disruption theory, an extension of terror management theory focused on psychopathology. When core death-anxiety buffers—attachment security, self-esteem, worldview connection, and meaning in life—are chronically or acutely shattered, death-related concerns intrude into consciousness and destabilize emotional life, producing symptoms of trauma, depression, and anxiety. Addictions, in this view, can emerge as maladaptive compensatory defenses: substances and compulsive behaviors that temporarily numb existential distress when healthier buffers have failed. Prior work by the same group found that combat soldiers exposed to life-threatening situations showed more post-traumatic stress and more problematic substance use when attachment anxiety was high and ideological identification was weak. A recent meta-analysis of 104 studies likewise found moderate associations between death anxiety and a broad range of psychiatric symptoms.

Within this framework, symbolic immortality emerges as something like the positive face of a transdiagnostic risk factor. Where fragile or broken anxiety buffers leave people exposed to death anxiety and its downstream disorders, a robust sense of symbolic immortality signals that the buffering system is functioning—loved, esteemed, meaningful, and woven into a collective story that will outlast the self. The researchers are careful to note that the study does not establish symbolic immortality as an independent causal predictor separate from the other buffers; rather, it appears to be a broad indicator that multiple protective processes are operating together.

The study has clear limitations. It is correlational, so the arrows could point in either direction or both: poor mental health and addiction may erode the social bonds, self-worth, and meaning that make people feel remembered, just as much as the reverse. Symbolic immortality was captured with a single item, and future work should develop multi-item scales that distinguish immortality beliefs across life domains, from creative legacy to descendants to national belonging. The setting is also distinctive: data were gathered in Israel during an active multifront war, when mortality salience, national identity, and collective trauma were all unusually heightened, potentially amplifying the observed associations. Cross-cultural replications, ideally in peacetime populations and clinical samples, remain necessary.

Even so, the implications are provocative. Addictive behaviors of the kind studied here rarely appear in wild animals, and the authors suggest a reason: addiction may be partly rooted in the existential problems that only humans face—awareness of death, meaninglessness, and uncertainty—and in the fragile cultural technologies we use to manage them. If the sense of being remembered is one of those technologies, then interventions that strengthen legacy, belonging, and meaning may do more than comfort the dying. They may help protect the living from despair and compulsion, offering a scientifically grounded answer to a question as old as Jimi Hendrix’s castles made of sand: what, exactly, keeps the sea at bay?

Subject of Research: The association between belief in symbolic immortality and mental health problems and addictions, examined through terror management theory

Article Title: Symbolic Immortality, Mental Health, and Addictions: A Terror Management Perspective

Article References: Lifshin, U., Shmulewitz, D., Levitin, M. D., Skvirsky, V., Cherniak, A. D., & Mikulincer, M. (2026). Symbolic Immortality, Mental Health, and Addictions: A Terror Management Perspective. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-026-01720-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s11469-026-01720-5

Keywords: symbolic immortality, terror management theory, death anxiety, mental health, addiction, substance use, behavioral addictions, anxiety buffer disruption, depression, PTSD, meaning in life, existential psychology