Everyday Discrimination Experience and Depressive Symptoms in Urban Black, Guyanese, Hispanic, and White Adults.

BACKGROUND: Discrimination experience is a stressor that may disproportionately affect the mental health of minority populations.

AIMS: We examined the association between discrimination experience and depressive symptoms among four urban racial/ethnic groups.

METHOD: Cross-sectional community-based health survey data for Black ( n = 434), Guyanese ( n = 180), Hispanic ( n = 173), and White ( n = 809) adults aged ⩾18 years were collected in Schenectady, New York, in 2013. Discrimination experience was measured with the Everyday Discrimination Scale (EDS), and depressive symptoms were measured with the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression (CES-D) scale. Logistic regression models for the association between EDS and major depressive symptoms (CES-D ⩾ 16) were fitted for each racial/ethnic group. The final model adjusted for age, sex, education, income, smoking, alcohol binge drinking, emotional/social support, and perceived stress.

RESULTS: The mean EDS scores varied significantly across groups ( p < .001), with 2.6 in Hispanics, 2.2 in Whites, 2.0 in Blacks, and 1.1 in the Guyanese. There was a consistent and significant independent association between EDS and major depressive symptoms in the crude model and at each step of covariate adjustment in each group. Fully adjusted odds ratios were 1.28 (95% confidence interval [CI; 1.16, 1.41]) in Blacks, 1.83 in the Guyanese [1.36, 2.47], 1.23 in Hispanics [1.07, 1.41], and 1.24 [1.16, 1.33] in Whites. The presence of covariates did not significantly modify the main effect in each group.

CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that discrimination experience can be one of the fundamental social causes of depression. It may be feasible to assess discrimination experience as a risk factor of depression in individuals of all racial/ethnic backgrounds.