“Motivator or Barrier? The Dual Role of Face Culture in Depression Recovery Among Chinese University Students”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63808/jmh.v2i1.490Keywords:
Face culture, Depression recovery, Chinese university students, Contextual moderators, Qualitative researchAbstract
Face culture has been predominantly framed as a barrier to mental health help-seeking among Chinese university students, yet its potential motivating functions in depression recovery remain theoretically underexplored. This study examined the dual role of mianzi across both facilitative and inhibitory dimensions of the recovery process, addressing three research questions concerning how face culture functions as a motivator, how it functions as a barrier, and what contextual factors determine its directional impact. Employing a qualitative research design grounded in a constructivist epistemology, this study conducted reflexive thematic analysis on semi-structured interview data from eighteen Chinese university students — nine female and nine male, aged 19 to 23 years — who had achieved stable functional recovery from clinically diagnosed major depressive disorder in Shandong Province, China. Analysis identified three positive pathways through which mianzi supported recovery: family honour as motivation for treatment, collective mobilisation of family support resources, and face restoration driving post-recovery identity reconstruction. Three negative pathways were simultaneously identified, comprising shame-driven help-seeking delay, stigma reinforcement and social withdrawal, and gendered face pressures as compounded barriers. The functional direction of these six mechanisms was differentially shaped by four contextual variables — recovery stage, family mental health literacy, gender norm internalisation, and social network composition — from which a Contextual Dual-Role Model was inductively derived. These findings challenge the prevailing single-directional barrier paradigm and provide an empirically grounded framework for the design of culturally adaptive mental health support within Chinese university settings.
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