When (passive) acceptance hurts: Race-based coping moderates the association between racial discrimination and mental health outcomes among Black Americans.

Unlabelled: There is growing evidence that general coping plays a role in the degree to which racial discrimination is associated with mental health symptoms (e.g., posttraumatic stress, depressive symptoms) for people of color. Relatively less is known about the role that race-based coping may play in the associations between racial discrimination and mental health for Black Americans.

Objective: In this study, we examined whether posttraumatic stress and depressive symptoms differed based on race-based coping style and tested whether these responses moderated associations between racial discrimination and posttraumatic stress.

Method: Black American adults (n = 401; 56.1% women, x̄ age = 44.02) were recruited from a community hospital setting. Based on a measure assessing race-based coping style, participants were classified as having either a passive, moderate, or active response style.

Results: First, we found that posttraumatic stress (F = 5.56, p < .01) and depressive (F = 4.49, p = .01) symptom severity differed based on race-based coping classification, with more severe symptoms found for the passive versus active group. Second, we found that race-based coping moderated racial discrimination's associations with posttraumatic stress (R2Δ = .02, F = 4.08, p = .02) and depressive (R2Δ = .02, F = 3.26, p = .04) symptoms, such that the associations between racial discrimination and symptom severity were only significant for the passive and moderate (but not active) groups.

Conclusions: These results suggest that for Black Americans, coping with racism actively (vs. passively) may buffer the association between racial discrimination and psychological symptom severity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).