Low-Income African-American Women Talk About Stress

Abstract

Research on stress has focused primarily on life-change events and daily hassles as sources of stress that can affect physical and mental health. There is evidence, however that chronic conditions causing stress may be more characteristic of the lives of poor, African Americans. For this study, 45 African-American women living in low-income neighborhoods participated infocus group discussions about sources of stress in their lives. Major categories of stressors were coded from transcripts and notes of each discussion. The women’s descriptions of their sources of stress help to shed light on the phenomenology of stress among poor, African American women. Correspondence between the emergent categories from these discussions and the categories outlined by D. Watts-Jones (1990) was also analyzed. The most often discussed source of stress for the participants was lack of adequate resources and the consequences of this. Other categories receiving considerable attention by the participants were role-functioning, relationship conflict, and health concerns.

Key Words:

• stress
• poverty
• women
• African Americans