Linking ethnic/racial discrimination to adolescent mental health: Sleep disturbances as an explanatory pathway

Abstract

Ethnic/racial discrimination is associated with negative psychosocial outcomes, and this study considered sleep disturbance as a mediating pathway. Employing a combination of daily diary and biannual surveys, multilevel structural equation models estimated the indirect effects of sleep/wake concerns on negative, anxious, and positive mood, rumination, and somatic symptoms. In a sample of 350 urban Asian (74% Chinese, 8% Korean, 4% Indian, 1% Filipinx, 1% Vietnamese, and 12% other), Black, and Latinx (25% Dominican, 24% South American, 22% Mexican, 15% Puerto Rican, 5% Central American, and 9% other) youth (M = 14.27 years, 69% female, 77% U.S. born, 76% monoethnic/racial, data collected from 2015 to 2018), there was evidence for sleep disturbances mediating the impact of ethnic/racial discrimination on adjustment. Nighttime disturbance, daytime dysfunction, and daytime sleepiness evidenced partial or full mediation for daily‐ and person‐level outcomes (υ = 0.1%–17.9%). Reciprocal associations between sleep disturbances and negative mood and rumination were also observed.

Persistence of Anxiety/Depression Symptoms in Early Adolescence: A Prospective Study of Daily Life Stress, Rumination, and Daytime Sleepiness in a Genetically Informative Cohort

“…Daytime sleepiness is an important sleep measure that may provide novel insights in addition to those obtained from standard behavioral sleep parameters (Hong et al, 2021), although it has been associated with other measures of sleep perception such as sleep quality and insomnia (O'Callaghan et al, 2021). Previous longitudinal studies in high-school students have reported reciprocal relationships between daytime sleepiness and both anxiety and depression, as well as perceived study stress predicting later sleepiness (N = 2787, Luo et al, 2018), and reciprocal associations between sleep disturbances, including daytime sleepiness, and both negative mood and rumination (N = 350, Yip et al, 2022). In addition, relatively large cross-sectional studies (N > 1000) have reported associations between daytime sleepiness and perceived psychological stress in high-school students (Chung & Cheung, 2008;Merdad et al, 2014).…”

Trauma exposure and associated sleep problems in Black adolescent and young adult students attending an alternative high school.

“…Rojo-Wissar et al (2021) posit that this may suggest there are indirect effects in the associations between trauma exposure, sleep, and mental health that warrant further investigation. For instance, sleep disturbances are proposed to mediate the association between ethnic/racial discrimination stress and mental health outcomes in youth (Yip et al, 2022). Studies have also found that addressing sleep can decrease both sleep problems and mental health concerns (de Bruin et al, 2018).…”

“…Due to the nature of the study design, the current study did not ask students to report on traumatic experiences involving physical or sexual abuse that would warrant mandated reporting. Inclusion of these types of trauma would likely affect total trauma scores for the sample, and exposure to these types of trauma may be uniquely related to various sleep parameters (see, for instance, Yip et al, 2022). Also, many participants experienced multiple types of trauma, which makes it more difficult to tease apart the influence of different types of trauma on sleep.…”

Every Day Matters: Using Daily Methods to Understand Oppression and BIPOC Youth Development in Context

“…For this latter mechanism, Yip et al. (2022) present an example in which daily experiences of discrimination are linked to mental health problems both on a daily basis and over time via daily sleep/wake problems. Recent statistical development (e.g., dynamic structural equation modeling; Hamaker et al., 2021) also allows for linking novel, conceptually meaningful daily quantities (e.g., variability in OREs and adjustment, the carry‐over of OREs and adjustment from one day to another, and daily reactivity to OREs) to long‐term development.…”

“…For example, using a stress and coping framework (Bolger & Zuckerman, 1995; Ong et al., 2009), Yip et al. (2022) examined the influence of ethnic/racial identity on adolescents’ (1) exposure to experiences of discrimination, (2) reactivity to discrimination on the same day, and (3) recovery from discrimination on the next few days. Cheeks et al.…”