Perceived discrimination and mental health among African American and Caribbean Black adolescents: ethnic differences in processes and effects

ABSTRACT

Objectives: Although the relationship between perceived discrimination and mental health among Black youth is well-documented, the mechanisms underlying this association remain unclear. Drawing from the stress process model, this study examines two psychosocial mediators – self-esteem and self-efficacy – in the association between perceived discrimination and mental health among African American and Caribbean Black adolescents. This research addresses three primary research questions: First, how is perceived discrimination associated with mental health? Second, to what extent do self-esteem and self-efficacy mediate the relationship between perceived discrimination and mental health? Finally, do these relationships and processes differ between African American and Caribbean Black adolescents?

Design: Data for these analyses come from the National Survey of American Life – Adolescent Supplement. We use generalized structural equation modeling to examine relationships among perceived discrimination, psychosocial resources, and mental health.

Results: For both African American and Caribbean Black adolescents, more frequent perceptions of discriminatory events were associated with greater depressive symptoms and a higher likelihood of having an anxiety disorder diagnosis. However, the association between perceived discrimination and depressive symptoms was significantly stronger for Caribbean Black adolescents. Generally, self-esteem and self-efficacy were found to be significant mediators in the association between perceived discrimination and mental health, although mechanisms varied between African American and Caribbean Black youth.

Conclusion: African American and Caribbean Black adolescents are highly susceptible to experiences of discrimination that negatively affect their mental health. Heterogeneity among Black youth populations must be considered when developing interventions to reduce exposure to and the effects of discrimination among these adolescents.

KEYWORDS:

• Adolescents
• perceived discrimination
• self-efficacy
• self-esteem
• mental health
• depressive symptoms
• lifetime anxiety disorder diagnosis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Psychosocial stressors can be defined as any acute or chronic ‘situations of social threat’ (e.g. social exclusion, social evaluation) that force an individual to react and adjust (Kogler et al. 2015: 237; Williams and Mohammed 2009).

2 Pearlin and Bierman (2013: 326) define stressors as ‘circumstances and experiences to which it is difficult to adjust and, therefore, that can impose deleterious effects on emotions, cognitions, behavior, physiological functioning, and well-being.’

3 We also ran supplementary analyses using a dichotomized version of the CES-D scale. Adolescents who had a score greater than or equal to 12 on the scale are coded as 1 to represent those youth with somewhat elevated and very elevated depressive symptoms (Poulin et al. 2005). Results from these analyses were generally consistent with findings from analyses using the continuous measure but with a few notable differences. Specifically, among African American youth, the association between perceived discrimination and probability of having somewhat or very elevated depressive symptoms becomes non-significant in the full model. For Caribbean Black adolescents, self-efficacy has no significant association with the likelihood of having somewhat or very elevated depressive symptoms. These analyses are available for view in the supplementary file.

4 Our use of ‘effect’ does not imply causality, as we are using cross-sectional data to examine the proposed relationships. In this study, ‘effect’ refers to associations among variables (Mize et al. 2019a).

5 To test whether the association between perceived discrimination on depressive symptoms significantly differed between African American and Caribbean Black youth, we ran an additional model with a multiplicative interaction between perceived discrimination and a dummy variable indicating the ethnicity (i.e. African American or Caribbean Black) of the adolescent and sociodemographic controls. As reported, the interaction term was significant, indicating that the association between perceived discrimination and depressive symptoms is significantly greater among Caribbean Black adolescents (p < 0.05).

6 Traditional procedures for testing interactions (i.e. interpreting the coefficient on the interaction term) are inappropriate in nonlinear models (e.g. logit). Following procedures laid out by Mize (2019b), we compute separate AMEs of perceived discrimination for African American and Caribbean Black adolescents and use a test of second difference to determine whether AMEs significantly differ between the two groups of youth. As reported results indicated no significant difference in AMEs of perceived discrimination between African American and Caribbean Black adolescents.