All Stressors Are Not Equal: The Salience of Racial Discrimination and Appraisal for Blood Pressure in African American Women

Abstract

Objective Psychosocial stress is a major predictor of chronic disease among African American (AA) women. Stress is a process involving exposure, appraisal of threat, coping, and psychobiologic adaptation. However, many studies focus on the frequency of stress events and/or coping; few explicitly study stress events and their appraisals. AA women experience high levels of racial discrimination, a well-known form of social identity threat (i.e., negative experiences due to judgement based on identity). Stressors related to social identity threat may be differentially appraised and associated with divergent physiologic outcomes. This study examined the differences in the frequency and stressfulness associated with general stressors and racial discrimination in relation to blood pressure (BP) among AA women. Methods Multivariable regression was used on cross-sectional data from 208 middle-aged AA women residing in the San Francisco Bay Area. Results AA women reported less frequency of racial discrimination compared to general stressors, but were more likely to appraise racial discrimination events as stressful. Racial discrimination stressfulness was more strongly associated with systolic BP (SBP) than the number of racial discrimination events. There was a U-shaped association between racial discrimination stress and SBP, with those reporting “none” and “high/very high” distress having the highest SBP [b = 12.2 (2.7,21.8) and b = 15.7 (1.5,29.8), respectively, versus moderate stress]. Conversely, those reporting “very low” general stressfulness had the lowest SBP [b = -7.9 (-15.8,-0.1), versus moderate stress]. Diastolic BP followed a similar pattern though results were nonsignificant. Conclusion This study highlights the importance of stress appraisal measures and adds to the body of evidence documenting racial discrimination as a salient psychosocial stressor for AA women.