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Stress and Mental Health: A Focus on COVID-19 and Racial Trauma Stress
Claire M Kamp Dush1, Wendy D Manning2, Miranda N Berrigan3
1Minnesota Population Center and the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. She is a family scholar with an interdisciplinary background that includes training in demography, psychology, sociology, and economics. Her research focuses on family functioning, including marriage and cohabitation, and its intersection with human development.
None:
In the United States, COVID-19 unfolded alongside profound racial trauma. Drawing on a population representative sample of 20-60 year-olds who were married or cohabiting, the National Couples' Health and Time Study (N =3,642), we examine two specific sources of stress: COVID-19 and racial trauma. We leverage the fully powered samples of respondents with racial/ethnic and sexual minority identities and find that COVID-19 and racial trauma stress were higher among individuals who were not White or heterosexual most likely due to racism, xenophobia, and cis-heterosexism at the individual and structural levels. Both COVID-19 and racial trauma stress were associated with poorer mental health outcomes even after accounting for a rich set of potential mechanistic indicators, including discrimination and social climate. We argue that the inclusion of assessments of stress are critical for understanding health and well-being among individuals impacted by systemic and interpersonal discrimination.
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