Racial discrimination is detrimental to the mental and physical health of African Americans. However, the ways African American adolescents and their families manage the challenges presented by racial discrimination and how those processes lead to the presence or absence of mental disorders is poorly understood. The long-term goal is to understand how the effects of racism and the responses of African American adolescents and their families to these challenges unfold longitudinally and how they confer risk for mental disorders in African American adolescents. The objective of research described in this Exploratory/Developmental Research Application is to test the individual and combined effects of dyadic mother-adolescent discussions about racial discrimination, parenting, and parent-adolescent communication in African American families on psychological disorders in African American adolescents. The central hypothesis of this proposal states that specific parenting and racial socialization practices foster resilience in African American adolescents exposed to racism in the form of fewer internalizing and externalizing disorders. This project has three specific aims: (1) to establish the pattern of interrelationships between observed and self-reported measures of general parenting and racial socialization;(2) to establish the pattern of interrelationships between racism, racial socialization, internalizing problems, and externalizing problems;and (3) to identify the role of parenting, racial socialization, and parent-adolescent communication about coping with racial discrimination in vulnerability to psychopathology and resilience in African American adolescents experiencing frequent exposure to racism. To accomplish these aims, we will use a new observational measure of racial socialization designed for use with African American adolescents and their parents along with self-report measures of racial socialization and parenting. Data will be collected from 100 African American families living in Indianapolis, Indiana. Mothers and their first-born adolescent between the ages of 14 and 17 will complete the observational task assessing content and context of communication about how to deal with interpersonal discrimination. We will also collect data on general parenting (i.e., warmth, discipline, and relationship quality), racial identity, and other relevant variables to test hypotheses related to the combined role of these factors on internalizing and externalizing problems in African American adolescents. The proposed research is significant because it will advance our understanding of (1) the role of racism vulnerability to mental disorders in African American adolescents, and (2) the combined effects of racism and family processes in fostering resilience and exacerbating vulnerability to mental disorders in this population.
This research will inform our knowledge of risk for mental disorders among African American adolescents and our knowledge of culturally appropriate interventions for children of color. This research is consistent with the NIMH's mission to transform the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses through basic and clinical research, paving the way for recovery, prevention, and cure. Finally, this research will satisfy one of the high priority areas of the NIMH Division of Developmental Translational Research (DDTR) in its focus on identifying behavioral and environmental mechanisms and processes that confer risk for or protection from childhood psychopathology.
| Davis, BreAnna L; Smith-Bynum, Mia A; Saleem, Farzana T et al. (2017) Racial Socialization, Private Regard, and Behavior Problems in African American Youth: Global Self-Esteem as a Mediator. J Child Fam Stud 26:709-720 |
| Franco, Marisa; Smith-Bynum, Mia (2016) The Relationship between Racial Identity and Perceived Significance of the Election of President Barack Obama among African American Mothers. Identity (Mahwah, N J) 16:182-189 |
| Smith-Bynum, Mia A; Anderson, Riana E; Davis, BreAnna L et al. (2016) Observed Racial Socialization and Maternal Positive Emotions in African American Mother-Adolescent Discussions About Racial Discrimination. Child Dev 87:1926-1939 |
