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Coping While Black: Chronic Illness, Mastery, and the Black-White Health Paradox

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Abstract

Prior research indicates that there is a black-white paradox in the relationship between physical health and mental health among American adults. However, none have considered black-white differences in psychosocial coping and depressive symptoms during the transitional stages from health to chronic illness. Using a nationally representative sample of chronically ill adults from the American Changing Lives study, this study builds on literature on chronic illness and the black-white paradox to examine if (1) growth in depressive symptoms across 16 years differs for black and white adults as they transition from healthy to chronically ill and (2) if the protective coping resource, mastery, provides an equal benefit to black and white chronically ill adults during that transition. Findings indicate that among chronically ill adults, not only do black-white disparities exist in how much mastery each group possesses, but that mastery’s utility as a protective resource against depressive symptoms differs by race, with black ill adults experiencing a poorer return on their mastery than white adults. Moreover, findings that black adults maintain the same level of depressive symptoms as white adults despite this mastery disadvantage provide additional support for Minorities’ Diminishing Returns Theory and some support for an emerging theory of collective resilience with regard to black American mental health.

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Notes

  1. Item 4 is in fact item 3 reverse coded. The ACL pre-constructed index was analyzed intact (including all items) in order to ensure that the measurement of functional impairment remained consistent across waves.

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This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. The author declares no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Biola University, 13800 Biola Ave., La Mirada, CA, 90639, USA

    Eundria A. Hill-Joseph

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Hill-Joseph, E.A. Coping While Black: Chronic Illness, Mastery, and the Black-White Health Paradox. J. Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities 6, 935–943 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-019-00594-9

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