Everyday discrimination and mood and substance use disorders: a latent profile analysis with African Americans and Caribbean Blacks.

BACKGROUND: Perceived discrimination is a major source of health-related stress. The purpose of this study was to model the heterogeneity of everyday-discrimination experiences among African American and Caribbean Blacks and to identify differences in the prevalence of mood and substance use outcomes, including generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, alcohol-use disorder, and illicit drug-use disorder among the identified subgroups. METHOD: The study uses data from the National Survey of American Life obtained from a sample of African American and Caribbean Black respondents (N=4,462) between 18 and 65 years. RESULTS: We used latent profile analysis and multinomial regression analyses to identify and validate latent subgroups and test hypotheses, yielding 4 classes of perceived everyday discrimination: Low Discrimination, Disrespect and Condescension, General Discrimination, and Chronic Discrimination. Findings show significant differences exist between the Low Discrimination and General Discrimination classes for major depressive disorder, alcohol-use disorder, and illicit drug-use disorder. Moreover, we find significant differences exist between the Low Discrimination and Chronic Discrimination classes for the four disorders examined. Compared with the Chronic Discrimination class, members of the other classes were significantly less likely to meet criteria for generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, alcohol-use disorder, and illicit drug-use disorder. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest elevated levels of discrimination increase risk for mood and substance-use disorders. Importantly, results suggest the prevalence of mood and substance-use disorders is a function of the type and frequency of discrimination that individuals experience.

Biobehavioral aspects of health and aging among people of Mexican origin.

There is a growing interest in developing a deeper level of understanding of the complex phenomena that make up the aging process. Efforts to pursue questions using a multivariate and ecologically valid approaches that include biological and behavioral factors have led to significant advances in our knowledge. This special issue presents a collection of papers that represent this "biobehavioral" perspective. Little is known concerning the biobehavioral aspects of Hispanic health and there is a dearth of systematic study of how individual biological factors interact with the environmental and cultural factors to affect health outcomes among the swiftly growing older population of Mexican origin, a subgroup of older minorities that exhibits unique morbidity and mortality patterns. The group of papers here represents important contributions to understanding the health consequences in later life for individuals of Mexican descent and addresses several areas of interest including but not limited to diabetes, cognitive impairment, metabolic syndrome, frailty, socio-economic status and contextual factors that impact health. The papers presented here use interesting and useful transdisciplinary approaches that increase our knowledge of health processes in older people of Mexican descent. This special issue also provides excellent examples of the critical linkages between biological variables broadly defined and traditional social stratification, social inequalities, and social justice and the ways in which they interact. The papers taken together suggest that the processes involved in aging and health are complex, particularly in people of Mexican descent, and requires the understanding of mechanisms at multiple causes and levels of analysis.