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My research program generally examines differences in African American youths’ responses to racism-related stress experiences. Racism-related stress experiences include individual, institutional, and cultural manifestations of racism (Jones, 1972). Prior work has examined the relationship between racial discrimination experiences and youth mental health outcomes. A second focus examines psychological factors and experiences that exacerbate or protect against the deleterious health effects of racism experiences. A third line of research examines the extent to which psychophysiological mechanisms play a role in the mental and physical health impacts of racism-related stress.
Racial Discrimination and Mental Health
Experiencing racial discrimination constitutes a significant risk to the healthy development of African American youth (Neblett et al., 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009). Three major shortcomings within the research literature limit our understanding of racial discrimination as a risk factor for African American youth mental health. The first limitation concerns the measurement of racial discrimination. Many measures of racial discrimination assume that youths’ racial discrimination experiences are the same as adults’ experiences. A second shortcoming is a preponderance of cross-sectional studies, making it difficult to ascertain how discrete and chronic racial discrimination experiences influence youth mental health over time. Third, underlying mechanisms in the relation between racial discrimination and mental health remain unclear. Future studies will examine: 1) the unique ways in which African American youth experience modern-day racial discrimination; 2) how discrimination experiences and changes in the frequency and nature of racial discrimination over time impact changes in African American youth mental health; and (3) underlying mechanisms that account for the link between racial discrimination and mental health.
Risk and Protective Factors
Although experiencing racial discrimination has negative health effects for some African American adolescents, not everyone who is exposed to the same level of racial discrimination experiences the same level of damage as a result of that exposure. Prior work has examined the protective nature of racial protective factors such as racial identity (Neblett et al., 2004) and racial socialization (Neblett et al., 2008). A recent study also examined Africentric worldview as a resilience factor with regard to the impact of stress on youth depressive symptoms (Neblett, Hammond, et al., 2010). For the foreseeable future, our efforts are likely to investigate racial socialization – parents’ messages about the significance and meaning of race – with a particular focus on how caregiver-youth interactions concerning race operate to influence normal and maladaptive development for African American youth (e.g., see Neblett, Terzian, et al., 2010). Ultimately, we are interested in how various coping resources, strategies, and styles convey risk or protection on youth mental health.
Psychophysiological Mechanisms in the Relationship Between Racism-Related Stress and Youth Mental and Physical Health
Psychophysiology is the scientific study of social, psychological, and behavioral phenomenon as related to and revealed through physiological principles and events (Cacioppo et al., 2007). Recent advances in physiological measurement have made it possible to examine how individual differences operate in the interplay among racism-related stress, psychological and physiologic response, and health outcomes. Recently, we adopted a visual imagery paradigm to examine individual differences in responses to racism analogues. In light of the potential role of racism-related stress in African American health disparities (Mays et al., 2007), we are particularly interested in identifying individual and contextual factors that influence psychological and physiological responses to racism. Preliminary data reveal that racial and ethnic protective factors moderate the association between racial discrimination experiences and blood pressure (Neblett & Carter, 2010). Future laboratory research will also examine physiological protective mechanisms against the impact of racism-related stress on youth mental health outcomes.
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