Socioeconomic Buffers of the Racism Effect on Depression

Background and Purpose: Racism and racist discrimination constitute a global public health crisis. Experiences of racial discrimination cumulate over the life course and lead to activation of stress responses and hormonal adaptations, increasing the risk of multiple health conditions including depression. The present study explored how depressogenic effects of racial discrimination in a vulnerable population may be buffered by malleable community-level policies and practices. We examined buffering effects of various dimensions of socioeconomic stability such as workforce participation and high school completion for reducing the effect of experienced discrimination on depression. In line with literature, we expected to find a statistically significant association between experienced discrimination and current depression. We hypothesized that this effect will be weaker, on average, for the individuals currently active in the workforce and/or for the individuals who graduated high school or obtained GED.

Methods: We conducted secondary analysis of data from a cross-sectional community survey (N=677) conducted in a marginalized urban community in a major US city. The survey data included the CES-D depression scale, the Everyday Discrimination Scale, and multiple indicators of socio-economic stability including respondents’ current workforce participation and their completion of high school or of a GED program. Analytic strategy relied on multiple regression analyses (with depression scores as a continuous outcome) in the frame of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), as implemented in Mplus software with robust estimator and full-information maximum likelihood (FIML) algorithms. To examine potential buffering effects of workforce participation and high school completion, moderation analysis was conducted via product-term approach.

Results: The effect of experienced racial discrimination on the current depression was statistically significant (p<0.005). As hypothesized, this effect was statistically significantly (p<0.005) buffered by dimensions of socio-economic stability including workforce participation and high school completion.

Conclusions and Implications: To address depression resulting from the experience of racial discrimination by means of mental health interventions is an important but difficult task. It is particularly difficult given the high rates of depression among racial minority communities of low socio-economic status, and the lack of demand for mental health treatment in marginalized communities. Our study shows that, in addition to mental health interventions, the depressogenic effect of experienced racial discrimination can be countered by supporting socio-economic stability of the members of vulnerable communities. Community-level interventions bolstering high school / GED completion and workforce participation may significantly contribute to the efforts reducing the burden of depression stemming from experienced racial discrimination.