Exploratory seven-day study associates student symptoms with emotional support receipt more than overall contact

An exploratory intensive longitudinal study of 38 university students found that baseline depressive, anxiety and ADHD symptom levels were associated more consistently with receiving emotional social support than with general face-to-face contact. Anxiety symptoms were positively associated with becoming a recipient of support in both cohorts, while depressive symptoms were negatively associated with support receipt among bachelor students and ADHD symptoms were negatively associated in both groups. The research was conducted as part of the PeerSmart Network Study at a large German university.

The sample comprised 23 first-semester bachelor students and 15 master students enrolled in the same social science programme. The bachelor group represented a newly forming academic environment, whereas the master group included students from semesters one to six and a more established peer context. The researchers analyzed the cohorts separately rather than treating them as a direct developmental comparison.

Before the observation period, participants completed baseline self-report measures of depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms and ADHD symptoms. During a synchronized seven-day smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment period, they received prompts at 12:00, 17:00 and 22:00. At each prompt, they reported face-to-face contacts lasting at least five minutes and any emotional support received since the previous survey after discussing their own problems or something troubling them.

Overall, participants completed 657 of 798 possible surveys, corresponding to 82.3% compliance. Interaction partners were selected from roster-based sociometric measurements that included all eligible members of the relevant cohort, including students who did not participate in the research. The analytical models included only events involving participating students because symptom scores and other actor-level covariates were unavailable for non-participants.

The researchers estimated Dynamic Network Actor Models for each cohort, treating received emotional support as a directed event process and face-to-face contact as an undirected coordination process. The models accounted for actor attributes, prior interaction histories, reciprocity and local network clustering. In the directed support models, the anxiety coefficient for becoming a recipient of emotional support was 0.23 in both the bachelor and master cohorts, indicating a positive model association rather than a specified change in log-odds or odds ratio.

ADHD symptoms were negatively associated in the bachelor cohort, with a coefficient of -0.09, and in the master cohort, with a coefficient of -0.14. These results concern baseline symptom levels and subsequent observed interaction events; they do not establish that symptoms caused the support exchanges. Face-to-face contact showed little evidence of an overall association between symptom level and involvement in interaction.

Alter effects for depressive, anxiety and ADHD symptoms were small and statistically non-significant in both cohorts. By contrast, interaction history was strongly associated with subsequent contact: inertia coefficients were 1.72 for bachelor students and 2.18 for master students. Transitivity coefficients were also positive, indicating local clustering in the interaction networks.

A robustness analysis found that pre-existing friendship was strongly associated with subsequent face-to-face contact while the absence of statistically significant overall symptom-level associations remained unchanged. Partner-selection findings were more limited and varied by cohort and interaction type. In the master cohort, higher-anxiety students were more likely to be selected as emotional-support providers, and support exchanges were more likely between students with similar anxiety levels.

In the same cohort, anxiety similarity was negatively associated with face-to-face interaction, whereas ADHD similarity was positively associated with it. No symptom-similarity effect in the bachelor face-to-face model was statistically significant. Some similarity estimates changed after adjustment for pre-existing friendship, suggesting that these patterns partly overlapped with established relationships.

Emotional-support events also showed strong network dependence. Inertia was positive and statistically significant in both cohorts, while reciprocity and transitivity reached conventional significance levels in the bachelor cohort. A robustness analysis incorporating pre-existing friendship broadly retained the central support-rate findings.

The ADHD results require particular caution: internal consistency for the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale was low in the bachelor cohort, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.55, compared with 0.78 in the master cohort. The study was designed to explore micro-level interaction processes within bounded peer networks, not to estimate population-level associations or test causal effects. Its small samples, restriction to participating students, reliance on self-reported interaction and support, and event times reconstructed from survey submissions limit interpretation.

Mental health was assessed only at baseline, so the design could not determine whether everyday support experiences subsequently changed symptoms. The authors characterize the results as preliminary and hypothesis-generating and call for replication in larger networks, other institutional settings, longer observation periods and studies with repeated mental health assessments.

Subject of Research: Exploratory intensive longitudinal associations among depressive, anxiety and ADHD symptoms, emotional support receipt and face-to-face contact in bounded university peer networks

Article Title: Mental health symptoms and everyday social interaction among university students: an exploratory intensive longitudinal study of relational events within bounded peer networks

Article References: Krüger, H. (2026). Mental health symptoms and everyday social interaction among university students: an exploratory intensive longitudinal study of relational events within bounded peer networks. BMC Psychology, 14(1), Article 1487. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05805-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40359-026-05805-7

Keywords: university students, mental health symptoms, emotional support, face-to-face contact, ecological momentary assessment, social networks, Dynamic Network Actor Models, intensive longitudinal study, anxiety, depression, ADHD, Mental