Interpersonal Trauma and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder among Black Women: Does Racial Discrimination Matter?

Structural Racism as a Proximal Cause for Race-Related Differences in Psychiatric Disorders

“…In addition to seminal research characterizing dysfunction related to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), emerging research highlights the unique and additive roles of racialized stressors in trauma-related psychopathology. Recent work from the Grady Trauma Project demonstrates that greater racial discrimination experienced by Black women exacerbates the effects of interpersonal trauma, contributing to heightened PTSD symptoms (8). These findings are in line with a recent prospective emergency department study demonstrating that racial discrimination experienced by Black individuals is predictive of future PTSD symptoms (9).…”

Measuring the biological embedding of racial trauma among Black Americans utilizing the RDoC approach

“…Results indicated a significant interaction between previous experiences of racial discrimination and experiences of interpersonal trauma (e.g., witnessing murder of a close family member/friend, being attacked with/without a weapon by a spouse/ romantic partner or stranger, etc.) among Black women living in urban contexts, such that the association between PTSD symptoms and interpersonal trauma was stronger at higher levels of racial discrimination (Mekawi et al, 2021). Although this study did not examine processes of acute threat, it provides support for taking both race-related and non-race-related stressors into consideration when examining the etiology and development of PTSD among Black women.…”

Racial Discrimination and Resting-State Functional Connectivity of Salience Network Nodes in Trauma-Exposed Black Adults in the United States

“… 85 Although we included PTSD symptom severity scores as a covariate in the models, adjusting for these scores alone may not fully capture the neural consequences of experiencing a traumatic injury. Acute posttraumatic stress symptoms are also correlated with racial discrimination, 6 , 14 which presents the possibility that the PTSD symptoms assessed, although the measures explicitly queried the index trauma, may also capture experiences of discrimination. We did not specifically probe racism-related vigilance or hyperarousal; future directions include administering surveys specifically designed to measure the construct, 37 rather than relying on surveys developed for PTSD assessment.…”

“… 5 The association between racial discrimination and negative health outcomes, such as depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), hypertension, and heart disease, among others, has been well-established. 4 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 Experiences of racial discrimination have also been linked to dysfunction of biological stress response systems, including greater allostatic load 19 , 20 , 21 and shortened telomere length, 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 suggesting an association with premature aging and declining health. Evidence of the association between racial discrimination and negative mental health outcomes has mostly relied on demonstrating this connection through self-reported data.…”

“…49 Notably, experiences of racial discrimination are uniquely associated with symptoms of hyperarousal and vigilance, 4 , 37 , 38 and racial discrimination predicts symptoms of PTSD. 6 , 14 , 50 The shared experience of hyperarousal and vigilance suggests common activation of the SN 31 , 33 , 51 and offers theoretical justification that the brain regions affected by traumatic experiences are similarly activated by racism-related vigilance. Indeed, although previous work has found novel associations between resting-state functional connectivity of SN nodes and discrimination, related symptoms, including posttraumatic stress, were not previously considered in the prediction model.…”