Study Reveals Link Between Community Stress and Mental Health Outcomes for Black Women

A recent study led by August Jenkins, a postdoctoral associate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has examined how stress from living in a low-quality neighborhood affects the mental health of Black Americans, as well as how these experiences differ between Black men and women. For their study, the authors investigated data regarding the psychological and neighborhood factors of a sample of Black Americans living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, between 2013 and 2015. They determined the objective quality of their examined neighborhoods by using the Area Deprivation Index, a measurement of any given area’s education, employment, income, and housing factors. The authors also assessed the participants’ perceived levels of community stress based on their reported negative and positive emotions, as well as any psychological disorders. The results found that Black residents who reported a greater perceived level of community stress were more likely to have higher negative emotions and lower positive emotions. Black women with a high level of perceived community stress were more likely than Black men to experience a psychological disorder. However, the authors noticed a different trend for communities with an objectively disadvantaged neighborhood as determined by the Area Deprivation Index. For communities with a greater objective level...