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. Nonrace-specific discrimination was associated with increased MDD risk among both African Americans and non-Hispanic Whites. However, race-specific discrimination was associated with increased MDD risk for African Americans and Black Caribbeans, but not non-Hispanic Whites. These findings suggest that nonrace-specific discrimination measures-used commonly in the existing literature-may obscure unique associations between racial discrimination and depression; race-related discrimination may have uniquely detrimental consequences for MDD risk among Black people (e.g., African Americans and Black Caribbeans). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).