Study connects discrimination to worse mental health, drug use later in life
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
A study linked discrimination related to race, gender, age and physical appearance to short- and long-term risks for worse mental health, substance use and other negative effects, according to results published in Pediatrics.
Yvonne Lei, BA, a third-year medical student at UCLA, said in an interview with Healio that the inspiration for the project came from her undergraduate work, in which she studied not only biology but also political science.
“I have an interest in looking at system-level approaches to a lot of the big health care problems that we are facing in the country, including mental health and well-being,” Lei said. “Discrimination was something I was always really interested in learning more about, because in my classes we talked about it a lot, but it hasn't been quantified as much, and within traditional health care, it hasn't been discussed as something to think about.”
To study how discrimination in youth can affect children “further upstream in their lives” — as Lei put it — the researchers examined data from six waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Transition to Adulthood Supplement during a 10-year period from 2007 to 2017. The study included 1,834 participants aged 18 to 28 years.
“We measured different types of discrimination that [the subjects] were experiencing, and how they self-reported how frequently they were experiencing these different types of discrimination,” Lei said. “We were able to get some information about all these different mental health and well-being factors down the line, such as a mental illness diagnosis, languishing and flourishing, and things like psychological distress. We were able to follow these points every 2 years over a decade and draw some conclusions.”
According to the results, young people who reported more frequent experiences with interpersonal discrimination reported more mental illness diagnoses (RR = 1.26; 95% CI 1.1-1.4), emotional distress (RR = 2.03; 95% CI 1.7-2.4), drug use (RR = 1.24; 95% CI 1.2-1.3), poor health (RR = 1.26; 95% CI 1.1-1.4) and languishing (RR = 1.34; 95% CI 1.2-1.4), and they were more likely to be diagnosed with a psychological disorder, whether in the same year as when they experienced the discrimination or up to 6 years later.
Lei said that although the study sheds light on the impact of discrimination on young people and more research is needed on the impact and causality of this relationship, consideration of these factors should be given by all health care providers.
“It’s so important to be looking at something such as discrimination and using that to inform how we treat our patients and understanding that there are a lot of different things that could be affecting someone's mental health and behavioral health,” Lei said. “I think providers should step outside of what is considered traditional health care, and advocate for smart, system-level changes because it does impact the health of patients that we're seeing. I would love if health care [providers] in general can push toward being stronger advocates within our communities.”