ArticleSocial science & medicine (1982)2018
High social trust associated with increased depressive symptoms in a longitudinal South African sample.
Article in Social science & medicine (1982), 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 61 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Maintenance and Collapse of Sense of Order: A Longitudinal Study of System Justification Mechanisms Among Chinese Youth.Brain and behavior · 2026Article
- Trust and cognitive function: a population-based cross-sectional survey among older adults relocated for poverty alleviation in Shanxi, China.BMC geriatrics · 2025Article
- Article
- Navigating trust and health in India: the influence of social status and neighbourhood environment.BMC public health · 2024Article
- Trust Is for the Strong: How Health Status May Influence Generalized and Personalized Trust.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Prevalence and associated factors of depressive symptoms among the young adults during the post-epidemic period - Evidence from the first wave of COVID-19 in Hubei Province, China.Acta psychologica · 2022Article
- Social trust and stress symptoms among older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from Asia.BMC geriatrics · 2022Article
- Article
- Engagement in leisure activities and depression in older adults in the United States: Longitudinal evidence from the Health and Retirement Study.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2022Article
- The impact of environmental pollution on the physical health of middle-aged and older adults in China.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2022Article
- Social Integration as Mediator and Age as Moderator in Social Capital Affecting Mental Health of Internal Migrant Workers: A Multi-Group Structural Equation Modeling Approach.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
- Association between community-level social trust and the risk of dementia: A retrospective cohort study in the Republic of Korea.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
- Ethnic Disparities in Social Capital and Health among Jewish and Arab Participants in the Israeli Mamanet Cachibol League.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Membership, Neighborhood Social Identification, Well-Being, and Health for the Elderly in Chile.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
- Does your neighborhood protect you from being depressed? A study on social trust and depression in Indonesia.BMC public health · 2019Article
- Neighborhood social reciprocity and mental health among older adults in China: the mediating effects of physical activity, social interaction, and volunteering.BMC public health · 2019Article
- Depressive Symptoms and Their Relation to Age and Chronic Diseases Among Middle-Aged and Older Adults in Rural South Africa.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2019Article
- Article
- The relationship between urbanization and depression in China: the mediating role of neighborhood social capital.International journal for equity in health · 2018Article
- The Relationship between Air Pollution and Depression in China: Is Neighbourhood Social Capital Protective?International journal of environmental research and public health · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Several studies have documented a protective association between social trust and mental and physical health, but gaps in knowledge remain. Debates regarding the contextual versus individual nature of social trust are ongoing; research from low- and middle-income countries is lacking, and study designs have been limited for causal inference. To address these gaps, we examined the association between social trust and depressive symptoms using three waves of the National Income Dynamics Study, a longitudinal South African survey. We used individual fixed-effects models to assess the association between changes in scores on the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale Short Form (CES-D-10) and in individual-level and district-level personalized and generalized trust among 15,670 individuals completing at least two waves of the NIDS adult questionnaire. High individual-level generalized trust was unexpectedly associated with increased depressive symptoms scores while district generalized trust did not show an association. We also found a cross-level interaction between individual and district-level personalized trust. High individual trust was associated with increased depressive symptoms scores when district trust was low; however, as district-level trust increased, higher individual trust was associated with reduced depressive symptoms. Our unexpected results suggest that trust may not always be beneficial for depressive symptoms, but rather, that its effects may depend on context. In the South African setting where social trust is low, being very likely to trust may be associated with worse depressive symptoms in some circumstances.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.