UNC-CHAPEL HILL — African-American men who believe that they should respond to racial discrimination with emotional control may experience more depression symptoms.
“We know that traditional role expectations are that men will restrict their emotions—or ‘take stress like a man’,” says study author Wizdom Powell Hammond, assistant professor of health behavior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “However, the more tightly some men cling to these traditional role norms, the more likely they are to be depressed.
“It also is clear that adherence to traditional role norms is not always harmful to men,” Hammond says. “But we don’t know a lot about how these norms shape how African-American men confront stressors, especially those that are race-related.”
Hammond says everyday racism—which is marked not so much by magnitude or how egregious the prejudice and torment are, but by persistence and subtlety—”chips away at people’s sense of humanity and very likely at their hope and optimism.
“We know these daily hassles have consequences for men’s mental health, but we don’t know why some men experience depression while others do not.”
For the study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, Hammond studied data collected from surveys of 674 African-American men, aged 18 and older, carried out at barber shops in four U.S. regions between 2003 and 2010.
Everyday racial discrimination was associated with depression across all age groups. Younger men (aged under 40) were more depressed, experienced more discrimination, and had a stronger allegiance to norms encouraging them to restrict their emotions than men over 40 years old. Furthermore, some men who embraced norms encouraging more self-reliance reported less depression.
The results showed associations, not necessarily causation, Hammond notes.
The data also shows that when men felt strongly about the need to shut down their emotions, then the negative effect of discrimination on their mental health was amplified. The association was particularly apparent for men aged 30 years and older.
“It seems as though there may be a cumulative burden or long-term consequences of suffering such persistent discriminatory slights and hassles in silence,” Hammond says. “Our next task is to determine when embracing traditional role norms are harmful or helpful to African American men’s mental health.”
The information will help target future interventions to subgroups of men, rather than try to reach all men with one general approach.
“African-American men are not all alike, just as all people in any group are not alike,” Hammond says. “The way they feel, respond, and react changes over time as they normally develop. The slings and arrows of everyday racism still exist, and we need to find targeted ways to help men defend against them while also working to address the policy structures that project them.”
Source:UNC-Chapel Hill/
