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Extreme racism-related events and poor sleep in African-American women
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Extreme racism-related events and poor sleep in African-American women

Izraelle I. McKinnon, Dayna A. Johnson, Raphiel J. Murden, Christy L. Erving, Rachel Parker, Miriam E. Van Dyke, Viola Vaccarino, Bianca Booker, Renee H. Moore and Tene T. Lewis
Social science & medicine (1982), v 316, 115623
01 Jan 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115623
PMID: 36041238
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115623View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

Biomedical Social Sciences Life Sciences & Biomedicine Public, Environmental & Occupational Health Science & Technology Social Sciences Social Sciences, Biomedical
Rationale: Much of the research linking racism-related stressors to poor health has focused on fairly non-violent forms of racism that directly impact individuals under study. Exposure to particularly extreme and/or violent racist events are increasingly visible via smartphone recordings and social media, with consistent anecdotal reports of the effects of seeing and hearing about these events on sleep among minorities who racially identify with the victims. Objective: This study examines whether exposure to direct and vicarious racism-related events (RREs), including more extreme events, are associated with sleep quality. Additionally, we examine effects of less and more violent direct RREs and vicarious RREs witnessed in person and via social media.Methods: Among 422 African-American women, we assessed exposure to RREs using a modified version of the Race-Related Events Scale and assessed sleep quality using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Linear regression analyses were used to model continuous global sleep.Results: Direct (8 = 0.24 [95% CI: 0.13, 0.35]) RREs were associated with worse continuous global sleep quality scores in analyses adjusted for sociodemographics and risk factors for poor sleep. More violent direct RREs (8 = 0.59 [95% CI: 0.30, 0.89]) had stronger associations with poor sleep quality than less violent direct RREs (8 = 0.25 [95% CI: 0.11, 0.40]). Vicarious RREs overall (8 = 0.04 [95% CI: 0.14, 0.21]) and those witnessed via social media (8 = -0.07 [95% CI: 0.29, 0.14]) were not associated with global sleep quality; conversely, vicarious RREs witnessed in person were (8 = 0.52 [95% CI: 0.21, 0.83]).Conclusion: Extreme, direct experiences of racism, particularly those that are violent in nature, are associated with poor sleep quality. However, extreme vicarious experiences are not- unless witnessed in person.

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15 Record Views
9 citations in Web of Science
4 citations in Scopus

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#3 Good Health and Well-Being

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Social Sciences, Biomedical
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