Interpersonal discrimination and depressive symptomatology: examination of several personality-related characteristics as potential confounders in a racial/ethnic heterogeneous adult sample

BMC Public Health

Tené T Lewis²  Hedwig Lee¹  Margaret Hicken³  Katherine King⁵  Haslyn ER Hunte⁴ 

[1] Department of Sociology, University of Washington, Box 353340, 211 Savery Hall, Seattle, WA 98195-3340, USA;Department of Epidemiology, Emory University, 1518 Clifton Rd, NE, CNR Room 3027, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA;Department of Epidemiology, University of Michigan, 3634 SPH Tower, 1416 Washington Heights, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA;School of Public Health, Social & Behavioral Sciences, Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center, West Virginia University, PO Box 9190, Morgantown, WV 26506-9190, USA;Environmental Public Health Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 104 Mason Farm Road, Chapel Hill, NC 27514, USA

关键词: Personality;    Depression;    Discrimination (psychology);    Psychological;    Stress;   

Others  :  1161543
DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-13-1084

 received in 2013-01-31, accepted in 2013-11-06,  发布年份 2013

【 摘 要 】

Background

Research suggests that reports of interpersonal discrimination result in poor mental health. Because personality characteristics may either confound or mediate the link between these reports and mental health, there is a need to disentangle its role in order to better understand the nature of discrimination-mental health association. We examined whether hostility, anger repression and expression, pessimism, optimism, and self-esteem served as confounders in the association between perceived interpersonal discrimination and CESD-based depressive symptoms in a race/ethnic heterogeneous probability-based sample of community-dwelling adults.

Methods

We employed a series of ordinary least squares regression analyses to examine the potential confounding effect of hostility, anger repression and expression, pessimism, optimism, and self-esteem between interpersonal discrimination and depressive symptoms.

Results

Hostility, anger repression, pessimism and self-esteem were significant as possible confounders of the relationship between interpersonal discrimination and depressive symptoms, together accounting for approximately 38% of the total association (beta: 0.1892, p < 0.001). However, interpersonal discrimination remained a positive predictor of depressive symptoms (beta: 0.1176, p < 0.001).

Conclusion

As one of the first empirical attempts to examine the potential confounding role of personality characteristics in the association between reports of interpersonal discrimination and mental health, our results suggest that personality-related characteristics may serve as potential confounders. Nevertheless, our results also suggest that, net of these characteristics, reports of interpersonal discrimination are associated with poor mental health.

【 授权许可】

   
2013 Hunte et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

Figure 1.

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