The Hidden Toll: Cumulative Stress and Black Adolescent Mental Health

• In Event: Children and Youth Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 7: Open Topic on Children & Youth

Abstract

This study explores how race and gender intersect with cumulative stressful life events (SLEs) to shape adolescent mental health, specifically focusing on parent-reported anxiety and depression symptoms. Guided by the Stress Process Model and an intersectional framework, the current project considers how structural racism shapes exposure to stressors and the racialized, gendered contexts in which stress is experienced and expressed among Black adolescents. Using nationally representative, imputed survey data and survey-weighted logistic regression models, I estimate predicted probabilities and contrasts in both anxiety and depression for adolescents exposed versus not exposed to seven key SLES, disaggregated by race and gender. Within-group results reveal substantial variation, as Black boys showed larger increases in anxiety, while Black girls exhibited greater increases in depression. These patterns reflect racialized emotional norms, gendered expectations, and emotionally inhibiting environments that shape how distress is both expressed and suppressed. Together, these findings extend and reimagine the Stress Process model, highlighting how structural stressors shape the sources, mediators, and manifestations of stress, showing how they operate through a racialized and gendered lens.

Author

• Thomas Marcellus Avent, Rice University