ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Adolescent and Young Adult Psychiatry
The relationship between anxiety and parent-child attachment and psychological resilience among Chinese college students: take 100 thousand college students as sample
Provisionally accepted
- 1Peking University National Institute on Drug Dependence, Beijing, China
- 2Beijing Normal University School of Government, Beijing, China
- 3Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
- 4Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China
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Abstract Background: Previous studies on the relationship between good parent-child attachment, psychological resilience with mental health, have limitations such as small sample sizes and specific regions or universities, which lack universality. This study aims to survey a total of 100,253 college students across China to clarify the correlation between parent-child attachment, psychological resilience and mental health among college students. Methods: Online questionnaires were performed from April 13 to 23, 2020 in China, used 10-item Depression Self-Rating Scale, Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7), Resilience Scale-Simplified (CD-RISC-10), and Parental Attachment Items in the Parent-Peer Attachment Scale (IPPA). Results: In total, 100,253 university students completed this survey. The detection rate of anxiety symptoms and depression symptoms were 42.74% and 44.25%, respectively. The parent-child attachment and psychological resilience among them were in a medium level. Anxiety symptoms, rather than depression symptoms were closely related to the quality of parent-child attachment and psychological resilience. However, there was no correlation between depression scores and parent-child attachment, as well as psychological resilience. Conclusion: Our findings indicate that both depression and anxiety symptoms in college students' population are high, and suggest that college students may have different etiology and pathogenesis of depression and anxiety. The treatment strategies for these two different types of symptoms for college students' population,
Keywords: Anxiety, Depression, Parent-child attachment, psychological resilience, College student
Received: 17 Jul 2025; Accepted: 24 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Li, Zhao, Li, Liu, Tian and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Su-Xia Li
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