{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,30]],"date-time":"2026-09-30T06:56:46Z","timestamp":1790751406516,"version":"4.1.0"},"reference-count":22,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,30]],"date-time":"2026-09-30T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1790726400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Psychiatry"],"abstract":"<jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Objective<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Suicidal ideation remains a major mental health concern among college students. This study examined whether perceived social support from family, friends, and significant others differentially moderates the associations of depressive and anxiety symptoms with suicidal ideation, with particular attention to a potential asymmetric buffering pattern.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Methods<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 504 college students using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), and Self-Rating Idea of Suicide Scale (SIOSS). Primary analyses used full-sample continuous interaction models in which depressive and anxiety symptoms were entered simultaneously. Robustness was assessed using the PHQ-8, while sensitivity analyses examined depressive and anxiety symptoms separately and further explored the associations across social support subgroups.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Results<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>After adjustment for demographic covariates, perceived social support from family, friends, and significant others showed significant buffering effects on the positive association between depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation. In contrast, these sources of social support showed significant positive interaction effects with anxiety symptoms, indicating a reverse-buffering pattern in which higher perceived social support was associated with a stronger positive association between anxiety symptoms and suicidal ideation. The PHQ-8 analysis showed generally consistent interaction patterns. However, the single-predictor and subgroup sensitivity analyses showed attenuation or variability in some interaction effects.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Conclusions<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>The findings suggest a potentially asymmetric pattern in the moderating role of perceived social support, with conventional buffering observed for depressive symptoms but reverse buffering observed for anxiety symptoms. However, the observed interaction pattern was sensitive to model specification, and the findings should therefore be considered preliminary and require replication in future studies. These results highlight the importance of considering both the source of social support and the specific emotional pathway when examining the relationship between social support and suicidal ideation among college students.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.3389\/fpsyt.2026.1930307","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,30]],"date-time":"2026-09-30T06:06:08Z","timestamp":1790748368000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Asymmetric reverse buffering patterns of source-specific social support in the associations between depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation among college students"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"17","author":[{"given":"Xiaoxia","family":"Tian","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Medicine and Health, Wuhan Polytechnic University","place":["Wuhan, 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