Experiencing racial microaggressions influences suicide ideation through perceived burdensomeness in African Americans.

Abstract

Racial microaggressions are a contemporary form of subtle discrimination that occur in everyday exchanges, and are associated with a variety of negative mental health outcomes, including suicide ideation. Previous work (e.g., Torres-Harding, Andrade, & Romero Diaz, 2012) has identified 6 dimensions of racial microaggressions: invisibility, criminality, low-achieving/undesirable culture, sexualization, foreigner/not belonging, and environmental invalidations. The current study examined whether the 6 dimensions of racial microaggressions were associated with increased suicide ideation through perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness among 135 African American young adults. Results indicated that perceived burdensomeness, but not thwarted belongingness, mediated the relationship between 3 racial microaggression dimensions (i.e., invisibility, low-achievement/undesirable culture, and environmental invalidations) and suicide ideation. These results imply that for African American college students, experiencing certain dimensions of racial microaggressions was associated with higher levels of perceived burdensomeness, which in turn was related to increased levels of suicide ideation. Clinical and societal implications are discussed. This study found that specific types of racial microaggressions were associated with higher levels of perceptions of being a burden on others, which in turn was associated with higher levels of suicide ideation in a sample of African Americans. These findings are important as they demonstrate 1 possible avenue through which racial microaggressions can negatively impact mental health. (PsycINFO Database Record

Scholar Identity Development: A Book Writing Journey and Tips for Undergraduate Mentors

“…The regularity and ambiguity of this discrepancy in perception has a detrimental impact to those on the receiving end. Hollingsworth et al (2017) used self assessments to evaluate the psychological impact of microaggressions on African American high school students, and found that frequent microag gressions were strongly associated with increased perceptions of selfburdensomeness and thoughts of suicide. Similar methodology found that the daily microaggressions experienced by children of Latino immigrants were strongly correlated with social isolation, poor health outcomes, and internal ized oppression (Ayón & Philbin, 2017).…”

Carrying the Burden: Counselors of Color’s Experiences of Microaggressions in Counseling

“…Their research described how racial nonverbal microaggressions affected embodiment, or connectedness to one’s body, for participants from diverse racial, ethnic, and gender expression backgrounds. Similarly, Hollingsworth et al (2017) found that, for African Americans, the cumulative experiences of racial microaggressions were connected to increased feelings of being burdensome to others, leading to increased suicidal ideation.…”

Systematic Review of the Indirect Relationships of Thwarted Belongingness and Perceived Burdensomeness in Suicide

“…For example, a sample of 348 university students revealed that the intensity of cyberbullying is related to suicidal ideation mediated by the PB variable and symptoms of depression (Mitchell et al, 2016). Other studies involving African populations (N = 135) have noted that experiencing certain racial microaggressions -invisibility, culture of low performance or undesirability, and invalidations by the environment -are associated with suffering from higher levels of PB, which is related to higher suicidal ideation (Hollingsworth et al, 2017).…”