IMPACT OF RACIAL TRAUMA ON THE MENTAL HEALTH OF AFRICAN AMERICANS

In the black community, various stigmatizations exist when it comes to discussing mental illness one being the ignorant assumption the examples of mental illness like PTSD, anxiety, or depression exemplify moral weakness. The longstanding taboo amongst African-Americans however are underlined by trauma from racism, discrimination, socioeconomic challenges, and other forms of inequalities and racial disparities that result in an increased risk of mental illness amongst black men and women. The statistical analyses frim Bird et al.'s (2021) research study help support one of my predictions relayed in the podcast that racial discrimination will exist as long as history will continues to rhyme with its past which will as a result due to the constant exposure of trauma lead to a continuous increase in mental health issues amongst African Americans: PTSD, anxiety, etc.

Artifact #3: In Bird et al.'s (2021) study, two variables were tested: racial discrimination and acute posttraumatic stress, in a participant pool of African American traumatic injury survivors. The purpose of testing these variables was used to predict extreme symotoms of PTSD amongst these patients who have been exposed to trayma. In measuring experiences of racial discrimination, a 17-item brief Percieved Ethnic Discrimination Questionaire on a 5-Point Likert Scale, participants who were African American traumatic injury survivors were asked to rate their experiences of discrimination, 1 being never and 5 being very often (Bird et al., 2021). The empirical data of Bird et al.'s (2021) research study collected from these subjects sugggested a significant correlation between the tested variables---racial discrimination and PTSD symptoms---which demonstrated that  in the beginning of the aftermath of the traumatic injury the participants who had a 6-month follow-up showed signs of more grave PTSD symtoms. Likewise,symptoms of PTSD severity was operationalized using a the PTSD Checklist (PCL) alluded in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) to seek out any presence of acute PTSD symptoms (Bird et al., 2021). In support of Bird et al.'s (2021) hypothesis that discrimination of black Americans leads to an increase in PTSD symptoms, the data of this meta-analysis displays that higher levels of racial discrimination of B=3.00 which represents a high strength of the effect of discrimination (the independent variable) on the severity of PTSD symptoms of Black Americans. Likewise, with a level of significance of p=.021, less than the alpha level used in this study of p=.05, demonstrates a prediction of more severe PTSD symptoms in these patients at the 6-month folow-up. The findings of this analysis suggested the indication that racial discrimination is severely detrimental to the mental health of those in the black community.