“The weathering hypothesis states that chronic exposure to social and economic disadvantage leads to accelerated decline in physical health outcomes and could partially explain racial disparities in a wide array of health conditions.” Forde, A. T., Crookes, D. M., Suglia, S. F., & Demmer, R. T. (2019)
The effect that racism has on Black women has been seen to have a deleterious impact on their mental health. Looking to Lacey, K. K., Parnell, R., Mouzon, D. M., Matusko, N., Head, D., Abelson, J. M., & Jackson, J. S. (2015), Black women face discrimination that is both gender-based and race-based. This exposure to discrimination causes distress and adversely affects mental health. In Vance, M.M., Wade, J.M., Brandy, M. et al. (2022) research, Black women frequently experience increased suicide rates. They explain that stress due to race discrimination has been linked to trauma and severe psychological symptoms. As you can imagine, the intersection of being Black and being a woman affects Black women the hardest. In Jones, H. L., Cross, W. E., & DeFour, D. C. (2007) study, 310 Black women attending three urban colleges participated. They were asked how racism affected their lives and contributed to their stress levels. The study’s results supported the connection between racist stress events and mental health.
Sources:
Lacey, K. K., Parnell, R., Mouzon, D. M., Matusko, N., Head, D., Abelson, J. M., & Jackson, J. S. (2015, October 1). The Mental Health of US Black Women: The roles of social context and severe intimate partner violence.
Vance, M. M., Wade, J. M., Brandy, M., & Webster, A. R. (2022, January 4). Contextualizing Black Women’s mental health in the twenty-first century: Gendered racism and suicide-related behavior – journal of racial and ethnic health disparities. SpringerLink.
Jones, H. L., Cross, W. E., & DeFour, D. C. (n.d.). Race-Related Stress, Racial Identity Attitudes, and Mental Health Among Black Women. (Rutgers University Libraries).