Discrimination has been linked with negative health outcomes among racial minorities, including increased rates of mental health problems such as panic attacks1, generalized anxiety disorder2, depression3and suicidal ideation4.
“Racial discrimination is a type of chronic stress that leads to both psychological and physiological stress responses and, as such, contributes to the disease process that results in negative physical and mental health outcomes for those who experience it,” Devin English, MPhil, a clinical psychology doctoral student at George Washington University in Washington, DC, told Psychiatry Advisor.
Multiple new studies confirm the link between discrimination anddepression among African Americans in particular and offer a more robust understanding of potential mechanisms and nuances of the association. As reported in the April 2015 issue of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, researchers at the University of Georgia collected self-report data from 222 African American males at five different time points between the ages of 16 and twenty.3 Their findings show that exposure to “racial discrimination from ages 16 to 18 predicted depressive symptoms at age 20, net of confounding influences,” as their paper states.
[For more of this story, written by Tori Rodriguez, go to http://www.psychiatryadvisor.c...ment/article/464397/]
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