consequences of racism they have affected generations and generations of people, leading to discrimination, loss of career opportunities, punitive measures and, in many cases, death.

Even when racism creeps in, lurks in words, and hints at headlines, the detrimental effects of discrimination and structural racism take a toll on the brain and mental health, according to a new study.

There is a constant link between the experience of racial discrimination and mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, substance use, and post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as physical health, such as diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. For example, black Americans are twice as likely to develop dementia as whites.

“Even as a child, you faced discrimination based on the color of your skin, you cannot change that,” says Arpana Gupta, an assistant professor at the University of California.

Both blacks and other racial minorities have learned to adapt, the researchers say, but not without a price.

“It’s like you have to work twice as hard to be successful,” explains Negar Fani, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University School of Medicine.

In the long term, racism accelerates aging and degenerates key brain circuits associated with regulating emotion and cognition.

“It is not a consequence of race. This is a consequence of everything that we put on the shoulders of racial groups, ”explains Nathaniel Harnett, a neuroscientist and assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Racial stress wears out the brain

According to Fanny, racial discrimination is a type of trauma that society often acknowledges or disputes.

Recent neuroimaging studies show that experiencing racial discrimination at the individual level and structural racism at the societal level changes how the brain responds to potential threats.

“The idea that someone has been discriminated against is often contested. And this leads to great personal discredit. This way, people self-cancel when something happens to them,” Fanny says, adding that this, in turn, can turn trauma into an obsession and increase their vigilance for any new racist threats.

IN 2021 study published in JAMA PsychiatryFanny, Harnett, and colleagues found that among 55 black women who experienced some form of trauma as children or adults, those who reported more racial discrimination had proportionately stronger neural responses in areas of the brain associated with alertness to threats. .

At the same time, they had increased activity in areas of the brain associated with visual attention, indicating that they may have been more attentive to their environment.

Vigilance works in the event of a threat, racial or otherwise, by helping the subject recognize it and move away from it. In the short term, it is possible to adjust to this state of heightened vigilance. In the study, black women who reported more racial discrimination performed better in attention spans.

However, prolonged stress it also causes long term changes in the brain. “The thing is, aspects of racism like racial discrimination and structural racism are everywhere,” says Harnett.

Racial Stress Linked to Health Problems

Chronic and long-term stress caused by racism contributes to allostatic load, accumulated weight and deterioration of the state of the body and health in general. Neuroimaging data have shown that racial discrimination is associated with changes in the gray and white matter of the brain, in areas of cognitive and emotional regulation.

“Our brains are not designed to be constantly engaged in the painstaking regulation of attention or emotions,” Fanny explains.

According to a 2022 study by her, Harnett and colleagues, among 81 black female trauma survivors, those who reported more racial discrimination had proportionately thinner gray matter.

In another study the same year, Fanny and her colleagues found that racial discrimination also affects white matter integrity in the prefrontal cortex, a key brain region that regulates behavior.

In practice, the loss of white matter affects the ability to self-regulate behavior. That is, if you press to the need to eat because of emotions, to use substances or not to exerciseblack women in the study are “more prone to health problems associated with these behaviors, such as diabetes, metabolic disorders, and cardiovascular disease.”

In this sense, the harm caused by racism is a common problem, mind and body in a vicious circle.

“We are not linear. Like humans, our biology influences our behavior and our environment influences our behavior, but then our environment influences our biology,” Gupta explains.

^{Source: Washington Post.}