Publications by authors named "Briana N Brownlow"
Article Synopsis
- In the U.S., Black Americans often cope with racism by controlling their emotions and being extra careful, which can be helpful but also hurt their mental health, leading to problems like depression.
- Studies show that Black Americans usually have a higher resting heart rate variability (HRV), which means they can manage stress better, but this doesn't always prevent depression.
- Research found that Black Americans with higher HRV who use these coping strategies might actually feel more depressed, suggesting that the way they cope with racial stress could backfire on their emotional health.
Historically and contemporarily, Black Americans have been compelled to use effortful coping styles characterized by high behavioral and emotional restraint in the face of systematic racism. Lynch and colleagues have previously conceptualized a class of regulatory strategies-overcontrolled coping-characterized by emotional suppression, hypervigilance for threat, and high distress tolerance, which bear close analogy to coping styles frequently used among individuals facing chronic racial stress. However, given the inherent culture of racism in the United States, engaging in highly controlled coping strategies is often necessitated and adaptive, at least in the short term.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Decades of research suggest that there may be important ethnic differences in the hemodynamic mechanisms that co-determine arterial blood pressure, the primary diagnostic index of hypertension. In general, studies have observed that, compared with European Americans (EAs), African Americans (AAs) exhibit higher total peripheral resistance (TPR), an important summative index of peripheral vascular constriction. In contrast, EAs have been reliably shown to exhibit greater cardiac output (CO), which is directly linked to left ventricle and overall cardiac blood flow.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose Of Review: Greater racial discrimination is associated with poorer mental health among Black Americans; yet, there remains an incomplete understanding of sex differences in exposure to racial discrimination, and further, of how sex differences in coping with racial discrimination may heighten or diminish risk for poorer mental health.
Recent Findings: Black men may experience greater exposure to both structural and communal forms of racial discrimination, whereas Black women may face both a wider range of potential sources, as well as encounter greater variability in the subjective experience of racial discrimination. For both Black women and men, racial discrimination may be similarly associated with maladaptive coping strategies (i.