Stress and Mental Health: A Focus on COVID-19 and Racial Trauma Stress

Claire M Kamp Dush; Wendy D Manning; Miranda N Berrigan; Rachel R Hardeman

doi:10.7758/rsf.2022.8.8.06

Stress and Mental Health: A Focus on COVID-19 and Racial Trauma Stress

RSF. 2022 Dec 1;8(8):104-134. doi: 10.7758/rsf.2022.8.8.06.

Authors

Claire M Kamp Dush¹, Wendy D Manning², Miranda N Berrigan³, Rachel R Hardeman⁴

Affiliations

¹ Minnesota 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.
² Dr. Howard E. and Penny Daum Aldrich Distinguished Professor in the Department of Sociology at Bowling Green State University. She is a family demographer focusing on trends in family formation and dissolution for same-gender and different-gender couples. Her research examines social relationships and the health and well-being of children, parents, and adults in the United States.
³ University of Minnesota. She is a human development and family studies scholar with interdisciplinary specializations in quantitative research methods and evaluation and demography. Her research focuses on the intersection of family, work, and well-being.
⁴ Blue Cross Endowed Professor of Health and Racial Equity in the Division of Health Policy and Management and Director of the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity at the University of Minnesota. Her program of research applies the tools of population health science and health services research to elucidate a critical and complex determinant of health inequity-racism. Her scholarship advances the field's conceptual and methodological tools for studying racism's relationship to health and healthcare.

Abstract

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.

Keywords: COVID-19; Mental Health; Racial Trauma; Stress.

Abstract

Grants and funding