Racial Trauma and Suicidal Ideation Among Ethnoracially Minoritized College Students: The Moderating Effect of the College Environment

Background and Purpose: Suicide is a public health issue and is the second common cause of death among college-age students. Rates of suicide have disproportionally increased among ethnoracially minoritized college students. The increase in suicide among college-age students may be attributed to depression, trauma, and other mental health issues. Yet, there are few studies that have examined the relationships between racial trauma and suicidal ideations among ethnoracially minoritized college students. Therefore, the purposes of this study were to: (1) determine if there was a relationship between racial trauma and suicidal indications among a sample of ethnoracially minoritized college students, controlling for depression and anxiety and (2) determine if sense of belonging and being on a college campus where racism is being address moderates the relationship between racial trauma and suicidal ideations.

Methods: Data and samples. A secondary data analysis of the 2021-2022 Health Minds Study (HMS) was conducted. The analytic sample consisted of 5542 ethnoracially minoritized students who completed survey. Of the sample,18.10% were African Americans, 38.45% were Asians and 43.45% were Hispanics, and 14.44% of the sample reported having suicidal ideations within the past year.

Measures. Racial Trauma was measured by a modified version of Trauma Symptoms of Discrimination Scale (TSDS; William et al., 2018), which consisted of 7 items rated on a four-point Likert scale, where 1= “never” and 4 = “often”. Suicidal ideation was measured by the following question: “In the past year, did you ever seriously think about attempting suicide?”. Anti-racism was measured by the following question “I believe my school actively works towards combating racism within the campus community”, which was rated on a six-point Likert scale, where 1 = “strongly disagree” and 6 = “strongly agree”. Sense of Belonging was measured using five items rated on six-point Likert Scale, where 1= “strongly agree” and 5= “agree”.

Analysis: 1) First using logistic regression examine the relationship between racial trauma and suicidal ideation. 2) Then adding interaction effect in logistic regression model to examine the moderating effect of anti-racism activities and sense of belonging.

Results: The results indicated that racial trauma is associated with suicidal ideation and this association held true across the race/ethnic groups. College actively addressing racism and sense of belonging moderated the effects of racial trauma on suicidal ideation across the race/ethnic groups. In other words, students who attend colleges actively addressing racism and students who have a higher sense of belonging are less likely to have suicidal ideations although they experienced racial trauma.

Conclusions and Implications: There is a relationship between racial trauma and suicidal ideations among ethnoracially minoritized college students. To lower the risk of suicidal ideation among this group, it is important for colleges to address racism and enhance student sense of belonging.