Social Support Mosaic

Abstract

Mental health wellness concerns are a significant issue among emerging adults due to the compounded stressors of life changes, new responsibilities, and career-related burdens. Due to a lack of support and the stigma associated with seeking help, they often do not receive adequate professional care. In this paper, we show how emerging adults seek help managing their mental wellness through social support. We conducted 19 interviews with students at a large university in the U.S. Midwest. Our study identifies that students maintain different social support groups, selectively sharing their concerns based on each group's role, benefits, and limitations. We call this support network the Mosaic of Social Support. We discuss opportunities for technology design that enhances the Mosaic of Social Support, allowing it to be more accessible, safe, and sustainable, thus providing tailored help to serve the students' unmet needs.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 32 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.