High Fear of Discriminatory Violence among Racial, Gender, and Sexual Minority College Students and Its Association with Anxiety and Depression

Minority students experience more discrimination on college campuses, yet little is known about fear of discrimination. This paper (a) establishes a new measure, fear of discriminatory violence, (b) assesses sociodemographic correlates of fear of discriminatory violence, and (c) estimates the effect of fear of discriminatory violence on anxiety and depression. A cross-sectional study using online surveys was undertaken among college students. A zero-inflated negative binomial model estimated the association between sociodemographics and fear of discriminatory violence. Multiple logistic regression models estimated the association between fear of discriminatory violence and anxiety/depression. Fear of discriminatory violence was higher among Black (ME: 11.9, p < 0.0001), Hispanic (ME: 5.9, p < 0.0001), Middle Eastern (ME: 5.4, p = 0.03), Asian (ME: 4.9, p < 0.0001), and multiracial (ME: 2.9, p < 0.0001) students compared with White students; transgender/gender non-conforming (ME: 7.2, p = 0.01) and female (ME: 3.4, p < 0.0001) students compared with male students; and gay (ME: 10.7, p < 0.0001), lesbian (ME: 9.0, p = 0.01), and bisexual students (ME: 3.4, p = 0.001) as well as those with a sexual orientation not included (ME: 5.5, p = 0.001), compared with heterosexual students. Increasing fear of discriminatory violence was associated with increased odds of anxiety (AOR: 1.04; 95% CI: 1.02, 1.06) and depression (AOR: 1.03; 95% CI: 1.02, 1.05). This understudied public health issue should be addressed to prevent fear of discriminatory violence and the resulting mental health consequences among college populations.