The impact of racism on Black American mental health.

Black individuals in the USA experience disparities in mental health that lead to unfavorable health outcomes and increased morbidity from mental illness due to centuries of racism. We emphasize the need to understand the roots of racial injustice to achieve racial equity. Historical factors such as European imperialism, enslavement, the myth of Black inferiority, and scientific racial classification have all perpetuated disparities, leading to the current underestimation, misdiagnosis, and inadequate treatment of mental illness in Black populations.

Race and nonrace-specific attributions of discrimination: Implications for major depressive disorder among African American, Black Caribbean, and White adults.

The discrimination and health literature has not clearly resolved whether race-based experiences with discrimination are meaningfully distinct from other forms of unfair treatment or whether race-based experiences affect racial and ethnic minorities differently than non-Hispanic Whites. This study compared the effects of racial and nonrace-specific discrimination on lifetime risk for major depressive disorder (MDD) using data from the National Survey of American Life (NSAL), a nationally representative sample of African Americans, Caribbean Blacks, and non-Hispanic Whites (N = 6,082). Discrimination was defined in two ways: (a) nonrace-specific (any experience of discrimination regardless of the attribution) and (b) racial (discrimination attributed to a race-related reason such as race or skin color), which allowed for an assessment of any unique effects of racial discrimination on MDD risk for each ethnic group.

Digital White Racial Socialization: Social Media and the Case of Whiteness.

The Internet has become a ubiquitous central element in the lives of adolescents. In this conceptual paper, we focus on digital white racial socialization (D-WRS), arguing: (1) for an expanded conceptualization of WRS as doings, and (2) that social media may be changing processes of WRS through an extension of traditional settings and through the creation of unique social contexts. We highlight the uniqueness of social media contexts due to the designed normalization of whiteness, weak-tie racism, social media affordances, and racialized pedagogical zones allowing adolescents to practice doing race.

Culture, Race, and Health: Implications for Racial Inequities and Population Health.

Unlabelled: Policy Points Racism is a fundamental cause of health inequities and disease, which requires policy solutions that address this cause directly rather than only targeting mechanisms. Cultural systems, such as cultural racism, undergird the social conditions that shape racial inequities in health, including social and health policy decision making, governance, practice, and public reception. Policies targeting racial health equity benefit from integrating social theory and meaningful assessments of the social context concerning race, racism, and health.

Appropriated racial oppression: Implications for mental health in Whites and Blacks.

Racism has been examined in its many forms. Scholarship regarding how individuals personally experience, cope with, and manage racial oppression is still developing. The term "appropriated racial oppression" reframes the construct "internalized racism" as a process whereby members of a group appropriate a dominant group's ideology, adapt their behavior, and perceive a subordinate status as deserved, natural, and inevitable.

Association of Exposure to Police Violence With Prevalence of Mental Health Symptoms Among Urban Residents in the United States.

Importance: Police violence is reportedly widespread in the United States and may pose a significant risk to public mental health.

Objective: To examine the association between 12-month exposure to police violence and concurrent mental health symptoms independent of trauma history, crime involvement, and other forms of interpersonal violence exposure.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This cross-sectional, general population survey study of 1221 eligible adults was conducted in Baltimore, Maryland, and New York City, New York, from October through December 2017.

Racial Disparities in the Association between Alcohol Use Disorders and Health in Black and White Women.

Adverse health attributed to alcohol use disorders (AUD) is more pronounced among black than white women. We investigated whether socioeconomic status (education and income), health care factors (insurance, alcoholism treatment), or psychosocial stressors (stressful life events, racial discrimination, alcoholism stigma) could account for black-white differences in the association between AUD and physical and functional health among current women drinkers 25 years and older (N = 8,877) in the National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. Generalized linear regression tested how race interacted with the association between 12-month DSM-IV AUD in Wave 1 (2001-2002) and health in Wave 2 (2004-2005), adjusted for covariates (age group, alcohol consumption, smoking, body mass index, physical activity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and arthritis).

Psychotic Experiences in the Context of Police Victimization: Data From the Survey of Police-Public Encounters.

Social defeat has been proposed as the common mechanism underlying several well-replicated risk factors for sub-threshold psychotic experiences (PEs) identified in epidemiological research. Victimization by the police may likewise be socially defeating among vulnerable individuals and, therefore, may be associated with elevated risk for PEs. However, no prior studies have examined the relation between police victimization and PEs.

Major discriminatory events and risk for psychotic experiences among Black Americans.

Racism is a multidimensional construct that impacts risk for psychosis through various complex pathways. Previous research has yet to fully explore how major racial discriminatory events contribute to risk for psychotic experiences in the general population. We examined the National Survey of American Life to analyze the effects of 9 major racial discriminatory events on lifetime psychotic experiences among Black Americans.

Self-reported experiences of discrimination and health: scientific advances, ongoing controversies, and emerging issues.

Over the past two decades, research examining the impact of self-reported experiences of discrimination on mental and physical health has increased dramatically. Studies have found consistent associations between exposure to discrimination and a wide range of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-diagnosed mental disorders as well as objective physical health outcomes. Associations are seen in cross-sectional as well as longitudinal studies and persist even after adjustment for confounding variables, including personality characteristics and other threats to validity.

Perceived Racial Discrimination as a Predictor of Health Behaviors: the Moderating Role of Gender.

Perceived racial discrimination (PRD) has been implicated in undermining the mental and physical health of racial/ethnic minorities. Researchers have begun to explore the indirect role of health behaviors as one factor in helping to explain this relationship. The goal of the present study was to examine the relationship between PRD and a wide range of health behaviors using a prospective, longitudinal design and to explore the role of gender in moderating these relationships.

Racial identity and depressive symptoms among Black emerging adults: the moderating effects of neighborhood racial composition.

In the current study, we explored patterns of change in Black emerging adults' racial identity beliefs during the transition to adulthood, assessed neighborhood racial composition effects on Black emerging adults' racial identity beliefs, and tested the moderating effects of neighborhood racial composition on the associations between Black emerging adults' racial identity beliefs and depressive symptoms over time. Participants in the current study included 570 Black adolescents (52% female) who were transitioning into adulthood (senior year of high school through 5 years post- high school). We did not find average patterns of change in Black emerging adults' racial identity beliefs over time.

Racial discrimination and substance use: longitudinal associations and identity moderators.

Current research indicates that racial discrimination is pervasive in the lives of African Americans. Although there are a variety of ways in which discrimination may contribute to health, one potentially important pathway is through its impact on substance use. Addressing the paucity of longitudinal research on this topic, the present study examined the influence of teacher discrimination on changes in substance use over time among African American adolescents and considered three dimensions of racial identity as moderators of this association (centrality, private regard, and public regard).

School-Based Racial and Gender Discrimination among African American Adolescents: Exploring Gender Variation in Frequency and Implications for Adjustment.

The present study examined school-based racial and gender discrimination experiences among African American adolescents in Grade 8 (n = 204 girls; n = 209 boys). A primary goal was exploring gender variation in frequency of both types of discrimination and associations of discrimination with academic and psychological functioning among girls and boys. Girls and boys did not vary in reported racial discrimination frequency, but boys reported more gender discrimination experiences.

Gender matters, too: the influences of school racial discrimination and racial identity on academic engagement outcomes among African American adolescents.

The authors examined relationships among racial identity, school-based racial discrimination experiences, and academic engagement outcomes for adolescent boys and girls in Grades 8 and 11 (n = 204 boys and n = 206 girls). The authors found gender differences in peer and classroom discrimination and in the impact of earlier and later discrimination experiences on academic outcomes. Racial centrality related positively to school performance and school importance attitudes for boys.