For many young adults, the transition to college is marked by academic pressure, social adjustments, and uncertainty about the future.
These challenges often heighten vulnerability to mental health struggles, particularly anxiety and depression, which are among the most common conditions reported by students worldwide.
Against this backdrop, researchers are increasingly asking what protective factors might help buffer against distress—and resilience has emerged as a leading candidate.
A new study by Hui Wang, Min Wang, Xiuchao Wang, Tingwei Feng, Xufeng Liu, and Wei Xiao, published in Frontiers in Psychiatry (2025), explores how resilience interacts with anxiety and depression in college students through an innovative technique known as network analysis.
The study’s central finding is that resilience, particularly the ability to manage unpleasant emotions, plays a protective role in reducing the impact of anxiety and depression symptoms. At the same time, specific symptoms such as persistent fear or difficulties concentrating appear to act as risk points, linking the two disorders together.
Anxiety and depression often go hand in hand, with global studies showing that nearly half of people with one condition experience the other as well.
Among college students, the prevalence is especially high, with surveys in China reporting that up to 40 percent experience symptoms of one or both.
These disorders do more than cause distress; they can interfere with academic success, social relationships, and daily functioning, while also contributing to long-term health and economic consequences.
Understanding what protects students from these difficulties is therefore a pressing concern.
The research team, based at the Air Force Military Medical University in Shanxi, China, conducted their study between March and August 2024.
They recruited 855 undergraduate students aged 16 to 24 from universities in Xi’an and Changsha, using both paper-based and online surveys.
Participants completed three widely used questionnaires: the Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale (GAD-7), the Patient Health Questionnaire for depression (PHQ-9), and the 10-item Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC-10).
By applying network analysis, the researchers examined how individual symptoms of anxiety and depression connected with aspects of resilience, identifying which features most strongly influenced the overall system.
The results confirmed that anxiety and depression symptoms were closely intertwined.
However, resilience showed a clear negative relationship with both, meaning that higher resilience was associated with lower levels of distress.
Within the resilience scale, the ability to “handle unpleasant feelings” emerged as particularly central, acting as a bridge that reduced the likelihood of anxiety and depression symptoms reinforcing each other.
Conversely, the feeling of being afraid that “something awful might happen” stood out as a key risk factor, amplifying connections between disorders.
Other symptoms, such as appetite changes and concentration difficulties, also played influential roles in maintaining or spreading distress within the network.
The implications of these findings extend beyond academic theory.
For students, resilience is not a fixed trait but a skill set that can be strengthened through experience, social support, and targeted interventions.
Identifying which aspects of resilience matter most provides valuable insight for mental health services on campus.
Programs that focus on emotion regulation—teaching students how to face and tolerate unpleasant feelings rather than avoiding them—may be especially effective.
Similarly, monitoring and addressing key risk symptoms, such as excessive worry or difficulty focusing, could help prevent escalation into more severe mental health problems.
The study also observed differences across demographic groups. Urban students reported lower levels of anxiety and depression and higher levels of resilience compared to their rural peers, possibly reflecting disparities in access to resources and support systems.
Only children showed higher levels of both resilience and anxiety than those with siblings, suggesting that family structure may also shape students’ mental health profiles.
These findings highlight how individual and social factors intersect, shaping vulnerability and resilience in complex ways.
Like all research, the study has limitations. It relied on self-report questionnaires rather than clinical diagnoses, and it focused on a single population of Chinese college students, which may limit generalizability to other groups.
The cross-sectional design also means that it cannot establish cause and effect—whether resilience directly reduces anxiety and depression, or whether students with fewer symptoms simply report higher resilience.
Future research could address these questions by following students over time and expanding the sample to include diverse cultural contexts.
Still, the study contributes important evidence to the growing recognition of resilience as a cornerstone of mental health.
By using network analysis, the researchers were able to move beyond general associations and identify specific pathways through which resilience interacts with anxiety and depression.
For college administrators, educators, and clinicians, these insights may guide more focused prevention and intervention strategies.
For students themselves, the findings reinforce a hopeful message: while anxiety and depression remain common challenges, building skills for handling difficult emotions may offer a powerful way to protect mental well-being during the demanding years of higher education.
Citation
Wang, H., Wang, M., Wang, X., Feng, T., Liu, X., & Xiao, W. (2025). Complex associations between anxiety, depression, and resilience in a college student sample: A network analysis. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 16, 1502252. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1502252
