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Why do Black people report better mental health than white people?

Tyler Cowen points to a new paper that says this in the first sentence of its abstract:

A central paradox in the mental health literature is the tendency for black Americans to report similar or better mental health than white Americans despite experiencing greater stress exposure.

This is indeed a well-known paradox, and the authors are naturally on the lookout for explanations. Since we know that Black people experience greater stress, there must be something that helps ameliorate it. In this case they opt for one of everything: higher levels of self-esteem, family social support, religiosity, and divine control.

But what if there's no paradox to begin with? What if it simply isn't true that Black people on average experience greater stress than white people? There's actually a fair amount of evidence for this, but it seems to be something of a taboo to say it out loud. Why? I suppose it's because no one wants to open themselves to charges of downplaying the effect of systemic racial bigotry, even if it's only by implication.

34 thoughts on “Why do Black people report better mental health than white people?

  1. Dee Znutz

    White people are just more uptight, it’s that simple. Every white person I know suffers from anxiety and depression or both, it’s wild.

    1. sighh88

      This sounds right to me. I'm white, and most of my friends are white, and the things that they (and admittedly sometimes I) stress out about are usually pretty ridiculous in the grand scheme of things. We need to chill.

    2. Maynard Handley

      I see we are back to being allowed to claim whatever random stereotypes we like, as long as they are about white people, men, or rural folk.

      Want to try again?
      How about "Woman are just more uptight, it's that simple. Every woman I know suffers from anxiety, depression, or both. It's wild."
      Or in even simpler terms, "bitches be crazy".

      FYI: In terms of actual numbers, for the types of "low level" disorders being discussed here (anxiety, OCD, depression, phobias, that sort of thing) the lifetime incidence is something like ~21% for women vs ~13% for men. Substantially more common in women, substantially a *minority* prevalence in both genders.

      And if you start to investigate this stuff by race, OMG, the level of dishonesty reaches levels far beyond anything I've seen before. Deliberate conflations of incidence vs treatment, of incidence vs respondents to internet polls, classifying "fair" as a response as "mentally ill", etc etc.
      But the bottom line is that racial differences are swamped by gender differences,

      In other words, if every white person you know is "uptight", well
      - uptight is not actually a mental illness
      - different cultures are different
      - how do you plan to square the circle of "different cultures should all hang out together and be best friends" with "white people are way too uptight for my tastes"? Perhaps time to admit that maybe the Schelling model of segregation doesn't actually reflect racism?

      1. jvoe

        I agree with a lot of what you said. But white people commit suicide at a much higher rate than black folks. I think we (me and others) could be helped by understanding why we are such neurotic, obsessives relative to our neighbors, black people.

      2. sighh88

        I’m sorry, Maynard. It sounds like you have it very difficult not being “allowed” to say all the stereotypes you would like to.

  2. lawnorder

    How about "stress does not cause mental health problems except at extreme levels"? Humans evolved to deal with stress; the stress of being stalked by a saber tooth tiger; the stress of not knowing where your next meal is coming from, or when; the stress of flooded caves, or freezing weather when you haven't collected enough furs.

    Modern humans in the wealthier countries have it easy; it's entirely possible that poor mental health may stem, in part, from not having enough stress, just like poor physical health can result from lack of physical strain.

  3. cmayo

    Here's a wild idea: the stress is normalized to them, so they don't think of the stress as stress. The stress of systemic racism (and poverty) is just normal, so...

    Also what jumps out is the optimism. You know what you have to have to be able to deal with higher levels of stress (and things like systemic racism)? Hope and optimism. It's a coping mechanism. That jumps off the page to me.

    1. kaleberg

      Are these based on extrinsic stress scores or internal assessments? What if Black people just have a different baseline for stress? What a white person might consider intolerable could just be considered, for the purposes of assessing one's stress level, to be more or less the world as it is.

    2. Maynard Handley

      Is this a falsifiable claim?

      Or have we added one more entry to the list of
      - when X happens, it's because racism AND
      - when !X happens, it's also because racism?

  4. Perry

    The ability to attribute negative events to external factors rather than internal ones is protective of self-esteem. See Marty Seligman's theories of causal attribution in learned helplessness and learned optimism.

    I think Kevin should be cautious about theorizing in areas where he has no training.

  5. Special Newb

    Black people know how to deal with stress, white people don't because the parents of white millennials screwed up their parenting. As the father of a young kid I have done a ton of reading on this topic and it really is a big deal.

  6. Doctor Jay

    Well, it's also the case that in mental health, self-report is king. I mean, are you really, as a researcher, going to listen to someone who says, "I feel pretty good!" and respond with "No, you don't!"

    There isn't much difference between acting like you feel good, and feeling good.

    1. KenSchulz

      No, this is why we have clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, and the DSM. Nobody feels better than a bipolar person in ‘manic’ phase - but that’s not a sign of mental health.

  7. haddockbranzini

    Self-reported stress. Nobody likes to be miserable like a comfortable white person. As a comfortable white person myself, almost all the people I know are f-ing complainers.

    1. Dee Znutz

      I mean there is complaining and then there are things like anxiety and depression.

      I complain about many pretty justified things, some that directly affect me and others that do not.

      I do not suffer from anxiety at all and depression only a small amount and very infrequently.

    2. Maynard Handley

      I guess all that business of "You have no right to dismiss my lived experience" only applies to minorities?

      Seriously, reading the comments on this blog and you start to feel that maybe Fox News have a point when they talk about a War on Whites...

      Perhaps next you'd like to mock the fact that whites at about 2.5x the rate of blacks? After all, suicide really is the ultimate whine.

  8. ScentOfViolets

    Why can't you just say that nobody currently knows ... and won't until more data is collected (not necessarily a guarantee) and leave it at that? If I flip a coin right now and ask you if you think it came up heads, are you going to give me a yes/no answer, or are you going to aver that you simply don't know?

    Tip 'o the hat to Perry for the Seligman reference, BTW. It's alway nice to find somebody who's reading the same stuff you are 🙂

  9. azumbrunn

    Maybe we ought to distinguish between self reported stress and objectively present stress. Stress is a social marker for upper classes: "I work so very hard and I am a very important (white) person that's why I am so stressed."

    Another point though is this: Suicide rates drop during wars and other major crises (don't know about COVID specifically). And suicide is certainly caused by stress of some sort. Which means that the amount of perceived stress on a person is not proportional to the amount of actual stressors that person is subject to. Which again would mean that the premise of this hypothesis (black people aught to have higher suicide rates) is flawed.

  10. Joseph Harbin

    Black people are much less likely than white people to have in-laws and other relatives praising the virtues of Donald Trump during Thanksgiving dinners and weekend get-togethers. Of course, they are less stressed than many whites.

    We already know Blacks have a far superior intelligence than whites. How else to explain their consistent voting record for Democratic candidates? Whites as a group, even at this late date in our history, demonstrate blithering idiocy in their continued wide support for a political party that is nothing less than batshit crazy.

    When the postmortem of our time is done, the question a future generation will be asking is, What the fuck was wrong with white people?

    1. Spadesofgrey

      Lolz. History doesn't support this. Ignorance and taking Semitic virtue as your own is nothing more than cultural failure. Much like blacks who think the gangsta lifestyle is cool and sticking it to whitey is rebellion, thus continuing the cycle of degeneration.
      Yet, you don't respect history, continuing to prove your failure as a poster.

  11. Talphon

    I think that it is related to how their media targets them. A little bit of anecdotal evidence: A coworker of mine is black. He listens to his favorite radio station while he works, a gospel/R&B station. The station presents lots of information and news on its morning show, relating to current events and politics. However, nearly all of it is presented in the form of information/course of action. Covid is getting bad? Mask up! Get Vaccinated! Here's where to go locally! Politics bad? Vote! Get your friends and family to vote! Here's where to register, by this time!

    The point is, white media abdicates the second portion. Everything I consume these days is: Things are bad, they're likely to get worse. Trumpism is on the march, Covid is ruining the Biden presidency, Global Warming is coming, Rational Dems are gonna lose the house and Senate to the crazy Trumpers. But there is very little actionable items to go with it.

    Whites feel more isolated from each other, especially suburban whites. Most of us work, go home and watch TV, go to bed angry because of said TV. Get up next day and repeat. Day in. Day out. I know the more news I consume the more stressed I am. I feel helpless.

    So that's my stab at answering this question.

  12. Goosedat

    The African American population has survived high level types of stress over hundreds of years that most European Americans have not experienced even when they first arrived as immigrants. One of the affects of an implemented free market economy since 1980 is the reduction of ethnic privilege. Now European Americans have to rely solely on whatever value they provide to the markets to survive, and they have not had generations of adaptation to this cold reality that African Americans have.

  13. jvoe

    One hypothesis, white people think about themselves--A LOT. Want to find an unhappy person, ask if them they thought about themselves in the last 30 minutes. I don't care who they are, if they think about themselves and their relative worth, they are miserable.

  14. galanx

    Blacks report lesser stress because , in general, things are getting better for black people. Whites report greater stress because, in general, things are getting better for black people.

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