Purpose in life assessment with artificial intelligence: a contextual approach to mental health in university students

The Purpose in Life Questionnaire (PIL) assesses life purpose and its connection to depression, anxiety and other mental disorders. This exploratory, longitudinal study investigates the sense of life purpose among 114 university students from three institutions in Mexico, using the PIL and 18 additional context-based questions. These extra items were grouped into a Contextual Opportunity Index (COI) consisting of four dimensions: demographics, academic-cultural background, access to public-private services, and lifestyle. Results show that 57% of participants reported a defined life purpose, 26.3% experienced existential uncertainty, and 16.7% showed signs of an existential void. The lifestyle dimension showed the strongest correlation with life purpose—particularly "nuclear family situation" (r = 0.431, p < 0.000001) and ``travel and leisure" (r = 0.263, p = 0.005). Predictive modeling using Naive Bayes and Decision Tree classifiers revealed that students' attitudes toward death acceptance, heavily influenced final PIL scores. Additionally, the dimensions Access to private services and Demography variables were linked to a higher PIL score. These findings suggest that both internal and contextual factors contribute to students’ psychological well-being and life meaning.