The road home: intimacy with parents, trust, and depression

Within the contemporary mental health discourse, the complex interplay of intimacy with parents, trust, and their collective impact on depression remains insufficiently explored, especially amid the merging of Western and Eastern sociocultural norms propelled by modernization, casting doubt on the foundational role of the family in individual psychological health. This study introduces a theoretical framework that merges attachment theory with modern societal shifts to clarify the intricate relationship between familial connections and individual mental health amidst changing social paradigms. Leveraging data from the 2018 and 2020 waves of the China Family Panel Studies, which included 3048 participants, this study utilizes ordered logistic regression to probe the subtle relationship between intimacy with parents and depression. Additionally, it employs Structural Equation Modeling to assess the mediating effects of five distinct dimensions of interpersonal trust, thus uncovering the complex linkages between intimacy with parents, trust, and depression. The results highlight the crucial role of intimacy with parents in mitigating depression, with trust in parents and neighbors identified as key mediators, while trust in strangers, local government officials, and physicians showed minimal mediating influence. These findings accentuate the critical importance of robust family and community bonds in addressing depression and call for a deeper understanding of trust’s role in both policymaking and clinical interventions. Despite the modern era’s trend towards individualism and greater mobility altering family structures and trust dynamics, the family remains an essential infrastructure and haven for individual intimacy, trust, and mental health, underscoring the subtle balance between modernity and tradition in societies undergoing transition.