Sunday, January 14, 2018

"Black Americans may be more resilient to stress than white Americans"



"We call a group “resilient” when it is healthy, given the level of exposures to a wide range of psychosocial risk factors. For instance, psychosocial adversities such as lower educational attainment are associated with increased mortality in general. But the effect is lower in some groups than others, so we would describe the groups where the effect is lower as more resilient.

White Americans seem to be more vulnerable to certain psychosocial risk factors for a wide range of physical and mental health outcomes compared to minority groups. In other words, they are less resilient – less able to successfully adapt to life tasks in the face of highly adverse conditions.

Across several studies using nationally representative samples of Americans, my colleagues and I have consistently found that white Americans are more vulnerable to the effects of risk factors such as low education, anger, depression, feeling of control over own’s life and other psychosocial factors on mortality...

Beyond physical health, my colleagues and I have also found that the link between depression and hopelessness is stronger for whites than for blacks.

And in another study I found that while white men had the lowest number of stressful life events compared to white women, as well as black men and women, each stress had a larger effect on their depression.

And finally, we found that whether or not people feel that they are in control of their lives is associated with premature death, but the association was 50 percent stronger in white Americans than it was in black Americans."


Another reason to laugh in someone's face when they suggest that activism is over-sensitivity.

Take yourself away


Related: several on resilience...

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