In my work with emerging adults, it isn’t uncommon to have 18- to 22-year-olds tell me that their parent (often mother) is their closest confidante and one of few people they trust. It’s also not uncommon today for emerging adults to experience relationships with their parents more representative of peer relationships of the past. This reality is a significant developmental issue that could have consequences regarding these emerging adults' later need for affiliation, need for intimacy, and resistance to loneliness, once family networks and environmental contexts change.

Loneliness and social anxiety are serious public health crises; this has been extensively written about by the U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy (Murthy, 2023). So, although modern-era parents may appreciate being the bestie to their teen or 20s children, researchers have taken an interest in how to comprehensively teach people how to establish and sustain non-kin friendships for enhanced well-being (Hong, Yeh, Sandy, Fellows, Martin, Shaeffer, Tkatch, Parker, & Kim, 2022). It's important that socially anxious and lonely people think and feel that establishing affiliation and intimacy with others can be achieved in contemporary cultures.

Thus, a comprehensive approach to addressing loneliness goes beyond merely teaching behavioral skills to the lonely and friendless. It also incorporates teaching people about their thoughts and emotions and how these, too, can contribute to approach and avoidance motivation regarding establishing connections with others. Hong et al. (2022) argued that such teaching should occur within established healthcare systems such as the creation of programs within community health organizations that could provide friendship interventions.

It is not a radical approach to suggest involving the healthcare system in efforts to assist people to establish friendships to benefit their mental health. This is despite loneliness........

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