Racial discrimination and other adverse childhood experiences as risk factors for internalizing mental health concerns among Black youth

Abstract

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have been consistently linked to a reduction in healthy psychological adjustment among youth. Emergent evidence suggests that there are culturally specific ACEs, such as racial discrimination, that are particularly harmful to the mental health of Black youth. However, the psychological impact of racial discrimination on the mental health of Black youth relative to other ACEs remains underexplored. The present study aimed to address this gap by examining the extent to which racial discrimination was associated with other ACEs and elucidating the unique associations between children's experiences of racial discrimination and internalizing problems (i.e., depression, anxiety), after controlling for other ACEs. Data consisted of a subsample of Black children from the National Survey of Children's Health (N = 8,672; M_age = 9.8 years; 51.1% male). Bivariate analyses illustrated that racial discrimination was positively associated with the co-occurrence of all other ACEs measured within the current study. Multivariable analyses using generalized linear mixed models revealed that racial discrimination was significantly associated with youth diagnoses of depression, adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 1.35, 95% CI [1.23, 1.49], and anxiety, aOR = 1.39, 95% CI [1.31, 1.47], after controlling for other ACEs and sociodemographic covariates. The findings demonstrate that racial discrimination is comparably associated with youth internalizing problems relative to ACEs conventionally examined within the childhood trauma literature. The importance of these results, including how this knowledge can be leveraged to inform clinical practice and policy to promote the positive mental health of Black youth, are also discussed.