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A good friend can be the person who gets you through a bad week. The same friend can sometimes feel like one more thing to carry. If both are true for you, you are not being ungrateful or confused. A small Norwegian interview study describes friendship as protective for some people, burdensome for others, and at times both within the same relationship. It cannot tell us how common that is.

What the researchers did

The study, "Friendship: a phenomenological exploration of the lived experience of youth and of peer support workers in Youth FACT (flexible assertive community treatment) services", was published in 2026 in the International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being. The authors are Hege Arvesen, Nina Helen Mjøsund, Vibeke Krane and Mona Sommer, and they are based in Norway at the University of Southeastern Norway and Vestre Viken Hospital Trust.

The team wanted to understand how friendship is experienced in everyday life by people who are facing mental health challenges, an area they say is less well studied than the general importance of friendship. Youth FACT is a community mental health service in Norway that follows up young people over time.

They carried out in-depth interviews with 14 people. Seven were young people aged 15 to 18 who were receiving follow-up from Youth FACT. Seven were peer support workers aged 28 to 45 who were employed in these services; peer support workers are staff who draw on their own experience of mental health difficulties. The researchers used a hermeneutic phenomenological approach. This means they selected detailed descriptions of experience, turned them into short experiential stories, and then reflected on and interpreted what those stories mean.

What they found

The authors describe friendship as a complex and living experience that is always in motion and partly beyond anyone's control. They write that it offers possibilities without guarantees, and that it unfolds through presence, vulnerability, movement and freedom.

The central finding was that friendship meant different things in different encounters. It was protective for some participants and burdensome for others. For some, it was both at once, within the same relationship and the same experience. That is the main reason to avoid a simple story in which friends are either good for us or bad for us.

This was a study of meaning and experience, so it does not report percentages, measurements or comparisons of outcomes. The published summary does not list individual quotes or themes in detail, and none are reproduced here.

What this does and does not show

The sample is very small, and it is limited to a particular setting: young people in one type of Norwegian mental-health service and the peer support workers who work in it. Fourteen interviews cannot establish how common these experiences are, and they cannot show that the same would be found in other places or other groups. Qualitative work like this is meant to describe experience in depth, not to count it.

It also does not show that friendship improves or harms mental health. Nobody was followed over time to see how their wellbeing changed, and no comparison was made with people without friends or with another form of support. The study should not be read as a guide to whether a given friendship is good for you.

One practical lesson is cautious. Not every difficult friendship is toxic, and calling it that may close off options that sit between staying close and cutting off. A friend can be supportive and tiring in the same week. A person can value a friendship and still need space from it.

This does not apply to relationships that are unsafe. If a friend, or anyone, is controlling, threatening or hurting you, that is not a boundary question and you deserve help. In Australia, you can call Lifeline on 13 11 14, or 000 in an emergency. If you are supporting someone with mental health difficulties and feel worn down, speaking to your GP or a qualified mental health professional can help.

Questions to ask

• What does this friendship give me, and what does it cost me, right now?
• Is there a smaller change, such as less frequent contact, clearer limits or sharing the support with others, that would let me keep the good parts?
• If I am the one leaning on a friend, how might I find other sources of support so the load is shared?

Source: Friendship: a phenomenological exploration of the lived experience of youth and of peer support workers in Youth FACT (flexible assertive community treatment) services DOI: 10.1080/17482631.2026.2660040

Illustration of balancing friendship support with personal boundaries. AI-generated editorial illustration. This article summarises published research in our own words and is general information, not personal health advice.