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Racism hurts, can antiracism heal?: Positive mental health correlates of antiracist engagement

Racism can hurt by negatively impacting mental health. For instance, large-scale events tied to racism like the May 2020 police-involved murder of George Floyd have been linked to poor mental health indicators (e.g. depression and anxiety). Notably, racism can spark antiracist engagement—support for...

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Autor principal: Brannon, Tiffany N
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10548497/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37799326
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad309
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author_facet Brannon, Tiffany N
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description Racism can hurt by negatively impacting mental health. For instance, large-scale events tied to racism like the May 2020 police-involved murder of George Floyd have been linked to poor mental health indicators (e.g. depression and anxiety). Notably, racism can spark antiracist engagement—support for addressing systemic racism. For example, Floyd's murder sparked unprecedented antiracist engagement, including heightened Black Lives Matter (BLM) support and protest participation. The present research explored the potential that antiracist engagement can heal: be positively associated with well-being. First, study 1 found that state-level BLM engagement (i.e. protest numbers, antiracism information-seeking on Google/YouTube) during an 8-week period following Floyd's death was associated with positive mental health indicators (i.e. lower depression and anxiety, higher self-rated health). It found these effects among racial/ethnic minorities (e.g. Black/African Americans, Hispanics, N = 161,359) and Whites (N = 516,002). Then, study 2 examined social media data (i.e. tweets) and emotional well-being. It used a measure of happiness indexed across 144,649,285,571 tweets from 2019 through 2021. It found a positive correlation between the volume of tweets with antiracist engagement content (e.g. referenced efforts to address systemic racism) and the happiness measure. Finally, study 3 examined antiracism protest data/information-seeking and a sample of BLM tweets (N = 100,321) posted between April and July 2020. Conceptually replicating studies 1–2, study 3 found that antiracist engagement was associated with greater positive emotion/sentiment (e.g. happiness) relative to negative emotion/sentiment (e.g. anxiety). Relevant to theory and policy, the observed results suggest that antiracist engagement can be associated with benefits for well-being across racial/ethnic groups.
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spelling pubmed-105484972023-10-05 Racism hurts, can antiracism heal?: Positive mental health correlates of antiracist engagement Brannon, Tiffany N PNAS Nexus Social and Political Sciences Racism can hurt by negatively impacting mental health. For instance, large-scale events tied to racism like the May 2020 police-involved murder of George Floyd have been linked to poor mental health indicators (e.g. depression and anxiety). Notably, racism can spark antiracist engagement—support for addressing systemic racism. For example, Floyd's murder sparked unprecedented antiracist engagement, including heightened Black Lives Matter (BLM) support and protest participation. The present research explored the potential that antiracist engagement can heal: be positively associated with well-being. First, study 1 found that state-level BLM engagement (i.e. protest numbers, antiracism information-seeking on Google/YouTube) during an 8-week period following Floyd's death was associated with positive mental health indicators (i.e. lower depression and anxiety, higher self-rated health). It found these effects among racial/ethnic minorities (e.g. Black/African Americans, Hispanics, N = 161,359) and Whites (N = 516,002). Then, study 2 examined social media data (i.e. tweets) and emotional well-being. It used a measure of happiness indexed across 144,649,285,571 tweets from 2019 through 2021. It found a positive correlation between the volume of tweets with antiracist engagement content (e.g. referenced efforts to address systemic racism) and the happiness measure. Finally, study 3 examined antiracism protest data/information-seeking and a sample of BLM tweets (N = 100,321) posted between April and July 2020. Conceptually replicating studies 1–2, study 3 found that antiracist engagement was associated with greater positive emotion/sentiment (e.g. happiness) relative to negative emotion/sentiment (e.g. anxiety). Relevant to theory and policy, the observed results suggest that antiracist engagement can be associated with benefits for well-being across racial/ethnic groups. Oxford University Press 2023-09-20 /pmc/articles/PMC10548497/ /pubmed/37799326 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad309 Text en © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of National Academy of Sciences. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial reproduction and distribution of the work, in any medium, provided the original work is not altered or transformed in any way, and that the work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
spellingShingle Social and Political Sciences
Brannon, Tiffany N
Racism hurts, can antiracism heal?: Positive mental health correlates of antiracist engagement
title Racism hurts, can antiracism heal?: Positive mental health correlates of antiracist engagement
title_full Racism hurts, can antiracism heal?: Positive mental health correlates of antiracist engagement
title_fullStr Racism hurts, can antiracism heal?: Positive mental health correlates of antiracist engagement
title_full_unstemmed Racism hurts, can antiracism heal?: Positive mental health correlates of antiracist engagement
title_short Racism hurts, can antiracism heal?: Positive mental health correlates of antiracist engagement
title_sort racism hurts, can antiracism heal?: positive mental health correlates of antiracist engagement
topic Social and Political Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10548497/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37799326
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad309
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