Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Impact of Racial Discrimination on the Mental Health of Minoritized Youth

  • Child and Adolescent Disorders (TD Benton, Section Editor)
  • Published:
Current Psychiatry Reports Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose of Review

The impacts of racism and discrimination on developing minoritized youth are increasingly shown as having the potential to create long-lasting adverse outcomes on children’s developmental trajectories.

Recent Findings

From the quality of the schools they attend, to the level and amount of toxicants in the air they breathe, to equitable access to health care, and within interpersonal relationships and experiences with their peers, multiple forms of racism, systemic/structural, interpersonal/personally mediated, and internalized shape the health status of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPoC) youth. Accordingly, it is exceedingly important to use a developmental lens to distinguish the various outcomes these multiple forms of racism have on the health of minoritized youth.

Summary

Critically, the time is now for rapid identification of these harms in all of the mediums and spaces in which they present followed by prevention and intervention strategies that are effective in equitably ensuring the healthy development for all of America’s children.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Availability of Data and Material

Not applicable.

Code Availability

Not applicable.

References

Papers of particular interest, published recently, have been highlighted as: • Of importance •• Of major importance

  1. Paradies Y, Truong M, Priest N. A systematic review of the extent and measurement of healthcare provider racism. J Gen Intern Med. 2014;29(2):364–87.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Brockie TN, Dana-Sacco G, Wallen GR, Wilcox HC, Campbell JC. The relationship of adverse childhood experiences to PTSD, depression, poly-drug use and suicide attempt in reservation-based native American adolescents and young adults. Am J Community Psychol. 2015;55(3–4):411–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Brown TN, Williams DR, Jackson JS, Neighbors HW, Torres M, Sellers SL, et al. “Being black and feeling blue”: the mental health consequences of racial discrimination. Race Soc. 2000;2(2):117–31. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1090-9524(00)00010-3.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Marrast L, Himmelstein DU, Woolhandler S. Racial and ethnic disparities in mental health care for children and young adults: a national study. Int J Health Serv. 2016;46(4):810–24.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Berry O, London Tobon A, Njoroge WFM. Social Determinants of Health: The impact of racism on early childhood mental health. Curr Psychiatry Reports. 2021;23(5):1–10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11920-021-01240-0.

  6. Trent M, Dooley DG, Douge J, AAP Section on Adolescent Health, AAP Council on Community Pediatrics, AAP Comittee on Adolesent Health. The impact of racism on chlid and adolescent health. Pediatrics. 2019;144(2):e20191765.

  7. Sellers RM, Caldwell CH, Schmeelk-Cone KH, Zimmerman MA. Racial identity, racial discrimination, perceived stress, and psychological distress among African American young adults. Jnl of Heal Soc Beh. 2003;44(3):302–17. https://doi.org/10.2307/1519781.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Stevens R, Gilliard-Matthews S, Dunaev J, Woods MK, Brawner BM, et al. The digital hood: social media use among youth in disadvantaged neighborhoods. New Media Soc. 2017;19(6):950–67. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444815625941.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Braveman PA, Cubbin C, Egerter S, Williams DR, Pamuk E. Socioeconomic disparities in health in the United States: what the patterns tell us. Am J Public Health. 2010;100:S186–96.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Gottfried M, Kirksy JJ, Fletcher TL. Do high school students with a same-race teacher attend class more often? Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. 2021. https://doi.org/10.3102/01623737211032241.

  11. Cave L, Cooper M, Zubrick S, Shepherd C. Racial discrimination and child and adolescent health in longitudinal studies: a systematic review. Social Science & Medicine. 2020;250:112864. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.112864.

  12. Geronimus AT. The weathering hypothesis and the health of African-American women and infants; evidence and speculations. Ethn Dis. 1992;2(3):27–221.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Geronimus AT, Hicken M, Keene D, et al. “Weathering” and age patterns of allostatic load scores among Blacks and Whites in the United States. Am J Pub Health. 2006;96(5):826–33.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Shonkoff JP, Boyce WT, McEwen BS. Neuroscience, molecular biology, and the childhood roots of health disparities: building a new framework for health promotion and disease prevention. J Am Med Assoc. 2009;301:2252–9.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15.  McDermott CL, Hilton K, Park AT, Tooley UA, Boroshok AL. et al. Early life stress is associated with earlier emergence of permanent molars. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2021;118(24):e2105304118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2105304118.

  16. Lee DB, Kim ES, Neblett EW Jr. The link between discrimination and telomere length in African American adults. Health Psychol. 2017;36(5):458–67. https://doi.org/10.1037/hea0000450.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  17. Chae DH, Wang Y, Martz CD, Slopen N, Yip T, et al. Racial discrimination and telomere shortening among African Americans: the coronary artery risk development in young adults (CARDIA) study. Health Psychol. 2020;39(3):209–19. https://doi.org/10.1037/hea0000832.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  18. Ayodeji E, Dubicka B, Abuah O, Odebiyi B, Sultana R. Editorial: mental health needs of children and young people of Black ethnicity. Is it time to reconceptualize racism as a traumatic experience? Child and Adolescent Mental Health. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1111/camh.12482.

  19. Jones NL, Gilman SE, Cheng TL, Drury SS, Hill CV, Geronimus AL. Life course approaches to the causes of health. Etiology Science. 109(1):S48–S55. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304738.

  20. Cobbinah SS, Lewis J. Racism & Health: a public health perspective on racial discrimination. J Eval Clin Pract. 2018;24:995–8. https://doi.org/10.1111/jep.12894.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  21. Priest N, Doery K, Truong M, Guo S, Perry R, Trenerry B, Karlsen S, Kelly Y, Paradies Y. Updated systematic review and meta-analysis of studies examining the relationship between reported racism and health studies examining the relationship between reported racism and health and well-being for children and youth. a protocol. BMJ Open. 2021;11(6):e043722. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-043722. PMID:34135031; PMCID:PMC8211069.

  22. • Paradies Y, Ben J, Denson N, Elias A, Priest N, Pieterse A, et al. Racism as a determinant of health: a systematic review and meta-analysis. PloS One. 2015;1:e1038511. This is a seminal manuscript that specifically highlights how racism impacts health.

  23. Williams DR, Lawrence J, Davis B. Racism and health: evidence and needed research. Annu Rev Public Health. 2019;40:105–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Clark R, Coleman AP, Novak JD. Brief report: initial psychometric properties of the everyday discrimination scale in black adolescents. J Adolesc. 2004;27(3):363–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2003.09.004. PMID: 15159094.

  25. Paradies Y, Bastos JL, Priest N. Prejudice, stigma, bias, discrimination and health. In: Shibley CG, Barlow FK (Eds.) The Cambridge Handbook of the Psychology of Prejudice. 2016. Canbridge University Press, Cambridge. p 559–581.

  26. •• Seaton E, Luta A. Continua: next steps for racism research among Black American youth. Child Development Perspectives. 2020;14(4):244–250. This article is one of the most recent and comprehensive examining the state of the literature and science around racism research and Black youth.

  27. Buchanan L, Bui Q, Patel JK. Black lives matter may be the largest movement in U.S. history. 2020. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html. Accessed 8/17/21.

  28. Bor J, Venkataramani AS, Williams DR, Tsai AC. Police killings and their spillover effects on the mental health of black Americans: a population-base, quasi experimental study. Lancet. 2018;392:302–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31130-9.

  29. Cooper SM, Burnett M, Johnson MS, Brooks J, Shaheed J, McBride M. ‘That is why we raise children’: African American fathers’ race-related concerns for their adolescents and parenting strategies. J Adolesc. 2020;82:67–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2020.06.001.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  30. Osbourne KR, Caughy MO, Oshri A, Smith E, Owen MT. Racism and preparation for bias within African American families. Cultur Divers Ethnic Minor Psychol. 2021;27(2):269–79. https://doi.org/10.1037/cdp0000339.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Das A, Singh P, Kulkarni AK, Bruckner TA. Emergency department visits for depression following police killings of unarmed African Americans. Soc Sci Med. 2021;269:1–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113561.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Butler-Barnes ST, Inniss-Thompson MN. “My teacher doesn’t like me”: perceptions of teacher discrimination and school discipline among African-American and Caribbean black adolescent girls. Ed Sci. 2020;10(2):44–57.

    Google Scholar 

  33. Hou Y, Kim SY, Wang Y, Shen Y, Orozco-Lapray D. Longitudinal reciprocal relationships between discrimination and ethnic affect or depressive symptoms among Chinese American adolescents. J Youth Adolesc. 2015;44(11):2110–21. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-015-0300-6.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  34. Forman TA, Williams DR, Jackson JS, Gardner C. Race, Place, and Discrimination. In Perspectives on Social Problems (p 9:231–261). JAI Press. 1997.

  35. Clark R, Coleman AP, Novak JD. Brief report: initial psychometric properties of the everyday discrimination scale in black adolescents. J Adolesc. 2004 Jun;27(3):363–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2003.09.004. PMID: 15159094.

  36. Landrine H, Klonoff EA, Corral I, Fernandez S, Roesch S. Conceptualizing and measuring ethnic discrimination in health research. J Behav C Med. 2006;29(1):79–94.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Harrell S. Development and initial validation of scales to measure racism-related stress. Paper Presented at the 6th Biennial Conference on Community Research and Action. Columbia, SC: Society for Community Research and Action (Division 27 - American Psychological Association) (1997).

  38. McNeilly MD, Anderson NB, Armstead CA, Clark R, Corbett M, et al. The perceived racism scale: a multidimensional assessment of the experience of white racism among African Americans. Ethn Dis. 1996;6:154–66 (PMID: 8882844).

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  39. Fisher CB, Wallace SA, Fenton RE. Discrimination distress during adolescence. J Youth Adolesc. 2000;29:679–95.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Landrine H, Klonoff EA. The schedule of racist events: a measure of racial discrimination and a study of its negative physical and mental health consequences. J Black Psychol. 1996;22:144–68.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Pachter LM, Bernstein BA, Szalacha LA, Garcia CC. Perceived racism and discrimination in children and youths: an exploratory study. Health Soc Work. 2010;35:61–9.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. Assari S, Caldwell CH. Neighborhood safety and major depressive disorder in a national sample of black youth; gender by ethnic differences. Children (Basel). 2017;4(2):E14. https://doi.org/10.3390/children4020014.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  43. Cheng ER, Cohen A, Goodman E. The role of perceived discrimination during childhood and adolescence in understanding racial and socioeconomic influences on depression in young adulthood. J Pediatr. 2015;166(2):370–7. e1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2014.10.010.

  44. •• Stevens R, Bleakley A, Hennessy M, Duneay J, Matthews SG. #digital hood: engagement with risk content on social media among Black and Hispanic youth. Jnl of Urban Health. 2019. 96:74–82. This article importantly begins to examine the impacts of social media on youth of color.

  45. Ayodeji E, Dubicka B, Abuah O, Odebiyi B, Sultana R. Editorial: mental health needs of children and young people of Black ethnicity. Is it time to reconceptualize racism as a traumatic experience? Child and Adolescent Mental Health. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1111/camh.12482.

  46. Heard-Garris N, Ekwueme PO, Gilpin S, Sacotte KA, Perez-Cardona L, Wong M, Cohen A. Adolescents’ Experiences, Emotions, and Coping Strategies Associated With Exposure to Media-Based Vicarious Racism. JAMA network open. 2021 Jun 1;4(6):e2113522. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.13522. PMID: PMC8207240.

  47. Riehm KE, Feder KA, Tormohlen KN, Crum RM, Young AS, Green KM, Pacek LR, LaFlair LN, Mojtabai R. Associations between time spent using social media and internalizing and externalizing problems among US youth. JAMA Psychiat. 2019;76(12):1266–73. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2019.2325.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  48. Giordano AL, Prosek EA, Henson RK, Silveus S, Beijan L, et al. Effects of vicarious racism exposure via the media on college students of color: exploring affect and substance use. Journal of College Counseling. 2021;241–14. https://doi.org/10.1002/jocc.12173.

  49. Plaisme M, Robertson-James C, Mejia L, Nunez A, Wolf J, Reels S. Social media and teens: a needs assessment exploring the potential role of social media in promoting health. Social Media + Society. 2020;1–11. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119886025.

  50. https://apnorc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/APNORC_Teens_SocialMedia_Messaging_2017_FINAL.pdf. Accessed 8/17/21.

  51. English D, Lambert SF, Tynes BM, Bowleg L, Lea MC, Howard LC. Daily multidimensional racial discrimination among Black U.S. American adolescents. J Appl Dev Psychol. 2020;66:1–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2019.10106.

  52. Volpe VV, Hoggard LS, Willis HA, Tynes BM. Anti-Black structural racism goes online: a conceptual model for racial health disparities research. Ethnicity and Disease. 2021;31:311–318. https://doi.org/10.18865/ed.31.S1.311.

  53. Tynes BM, Willis HA, Stewart AM, Hamilton MW. Race-related traumatic events online and mental health among adolescents of color. J Adolesc Health. 2019;65:371–7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2019.03.006.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  54. Browning CR, Tarrence J, LaPlant E, Boettner B, Schmeer KK, et al. Exposure to police-related deaths and physiological stress among urban black you. Psychoneuroendochronology. 2021;2021(125):1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2020.104884.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  55. Morawitz-Behm E. Media use and the development of racial and ethnic identities. The International Encyclopedia of Media Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.13522.

  56. https://www2.census.gov.

  57. Jones CP. Confronting institutionalized racism. Phylon (1960-). 2002;50(1/2):7–22. https://doi.org/10.2307/4149999.

  58. Fisher CB, Wallace SA, Fenton RE. Discrimination distress during adolescence. Jnl Youth and Adol. 2000;29:679–95.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  59. Anderson RE et al. Hands up, now what?: Black families’ reactions to racial socialization interventions. Journal of Youth Development, [S.l.], v. 15, n. 5, p. 93–109, sep. 2020. ISSN 2325–4017. Available at: <https://jyd.pitt.edu/ojs/jyd/article/view/20-15-5-PA-01>. Date accessed: 11 aug. 2021. https://doi.org/10.5195/jyd.2020.755.

  60. •• Anderson RE, Jones SC, Saleem FT, Metzger I, Anyiwo N, Nisbeth KS, Bess KD, Resnicow K, Stevenson HC. Interrupting the Pathway From Discrimination to Black Adolescents’ Psychosocial Outcomes: The Contribution of Parental Racial Worries and Racial Socialization Competency. Child Development. 2021 Jun 16. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13607. This recent article speaks to ways to intervene and mitigate the impacts of racism on Black youth.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Wanjikũ F. M. Njoroge

  2. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Wanjikũ F. M. Njoroge

  3. Dornsife School of Public Health, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Markolline Forkpa

  4. Department of Psychiatry, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Eraka Bath

Authors
  1. Wanjikũ F. M. Njoroge
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Markolline Forkpa
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Eraka Bath
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors conceptualized the analysis, provided critical revisions to the manuscript, and approved the final manuscript as submitted.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wanjikũ F. M. Njoroge.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no competing interests.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

Not applicable.

Consent to Publication

Not applicable.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Child and Adolescent Disorders

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Njoroge, W.F.M., Forkpa, M. & Bath, E. Impact of Racial Discrimination on the Mental Health of Minoritized Youth. Curr Psychiatry Rep 23, 81 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11920-021-01297-x

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11920-021-01297-x

Keywords

Search

Navigation