Restrained Response to Bias Can Lead to Depression

[?errthang]

Restrained Response to Bias Can Lead to Depression
By RICK NAUERT PHD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on March 15, 2012

New research suggests a stoic approach to racial discrimination can lead to increased symptoms of depression among African-American men.

Investigators from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill discovered emotional control while enduring subtle, insidious acts of racial discrimination may be counterproductive. The study is found online in the American Journal of Public Health.

“We know that traditional role expectations are that men will restrict their emotions — or ‘take stress like a man,’” said study author Wizdom Powell Hammond, Ph.D. “However, the more tightly some men cling to these traditional role norms, the more likely they are to be depressed.

“It also is clear that adherence to traditional role norms is not always harmful to men,” Hammond said. “But we don’t know a lot about how these norms shape how African-American men confront stressors, especially those that are race-related.”

Hammond studied the phenomenon researchers call everyday racism, which is marked not so much by magnitude or how egregious the prejudice and torment were, but by persistence and subtlety.

“It chips away at people’s sense of humanity and very likely at their hope and optimism,” Hammond said. “We know these daily hassles have consequences for men’s mental health, but we don’t know why some men experience depression while others do not.”

Hammond studied data collected from surveys of 674 African-American men, aged 18 and older, carried out at barber shops in four U.S. regions between 2003 and 2010.

She found that everyday racial discrimination was associated with depression across all age groups. Younger men (aged under 40) were more depressed, experienced more discrimination and had a stronger allegiance to norms encouraging them to restrict their emotions than men over 40 years old. Furthermore, some men who embraced norms encouraging more self-reliance reported less depression.

The results showed associations, not necessarily causation, Hammond cautioned.

The data also showed that when men felt strongly about the need to shut down their emotions, then the negative effect of discrimination on their mental health was amplified. The association was particularly apparent for men aged 30 years and older.

“It seems as though there may be a cumulative burden or long-term consequences of suffering such persistent discriminatory slights and hassles in silence,” Hammond said. “Our next task is to determine when embracing traditional role norms are harmful or helpful to African-American men’s mental health.”

The information will help target future interventions to subgroups of men, rather than try to reach all men with one general approach.

“African-American men are not all alike, just as all people in any group are not alike,” Hammond said.

“The way they feel, respond and react changes over time as they normally develop. The slings and arrows of everyday racism still exist, and we need to find targeted ways to help men defend against them while also working to address the policy structures that project them.”

[Yaw Asare Aboagye]

I wonder who is funding this research?

[?errthang]

Good question...she's a 2011-2012 White House Fellow, so she's probably using that money to fund her research.

About the author of the study (not the article):

Wizdom Powell, Norfolk, VA. Wizdom Powell most recently served as an Assistant Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education (HBHE) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) Gillings School of Global Public Health and a UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center faculty member. Her community-based domestic research examines the impact of neighborhood, healthcare, and socioeconomic resources on racial health disparities, with an emphasis on vulnerable Black males. She has published over 15 scientific articles and book chapters. In 2009, she gave invited expert testimony to the President’s Cancer Panel about racial/ethnic minority healthcare experiences. Prior to her positions at UNC, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at the University of California, San Francisco and Berkeley. She is an American Psychological Association (APA) Minority and Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow who received a Ph.D. and M.S. in Clinical Psychology and M.P.H. in HBHE from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. In recognition of outstanding dissertation research, Wizdom received APA’s Division 51 Loren Frankel Award. Wizdom obtained her B.A., summa cum laude, in Forensic Psychology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice where she received the Thurgood Marshall, Malcolm-King Leadership, and Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program Alumnae of the Year awards. Placement: U.S. Department of Defense

[Yaw Asare Aboagye]

Thanks ?errthang. As you probably thought before I even asked the question, this research being to our full benefit is mostly dubious after reviewing the additional information you provided.

Now the question becomes how are they going to use this research against us? I'm not necessarily lumping the researcher in with that question.

[?errthang]

Agreed....need to know who is funding and why and who is researching and why. Is the research being used to help us or hurt us......