Racial Disparity in Depression, Anxiety, and Self-Derogation over the Life Course

• In Event: 1231 - Open Topic on Sociology of Mental Health

Abstract

Paradoxically, while black and Hispanic minorities in the US experience higher levels of discrimination and are overrepresented among lower socio-economic strata, yet they report lower levels of depression and higher levels of self-esteem than whites. In this paper, we propose to: 1) explore the gap between non-Hispanic whites and blacks at different ages from adolescence to adulthood and across two different generations; 2) compare the gap between non-Hispanic whites and blacks in three different dimensions of negative self-feelings (anxiety, depression, and self-derogation), and; 3) propose a logical mechanism to explain the gap. In particular, we hypothesize that racial difference in locus of control explains the gap in negative self-feelings between whites and blacks more completely than minority stress theory. Using data from the Kaplan Longitudinal and Multigenerational Study, we are able to investigate the gap in all three components of negative self-feelings for two generations from adolescence to adulthood. We find that for depression and anxiety, blacks have worse outcomes than whites in adolescence, but the disparity reverses in adulthood: blacks tend to have lower depression and anxiety in adulthood across both parental and children’s generations. For self-derogation, however, the disparity is always, regardless of age and cohort, in favor of blacks: blacks tend to have lower level of self-derogation that whites. Locus of control does explain at least a part of the discrepancy in depression and anxiety between black and white in adolescence when blacks have higher levels of depression and anxiety than white. However, in adulthood and in the case of self-derogation, including external locus of control in the model increases the black advantage in self-feelings over whites.

Authors

• Heili Pals, Texas A&M University

• Warren Waren, Texas A&M University