Racial Discrimination, Cultural Resilience, and Stress

• Published in: The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry
• Main Authors: Spence, Nicholas D., Wells, Samantha, Graham, Kathryn, George, Julie
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publications 2016
• Subjects: Psychiatry and Mental health; First Nations
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0706743716638653; http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0706743716638653; http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/0706743716638653

Objective: Racial discrimination is a social determinant of health for First Nations people. Cultural resilience has been regarded as a potentially positive resource for social outcomes. Using a compensatory model of resilience, this study sought to determine if cultural resilience (compensatory factor) neutralized or offset the detrimental effect of racial discrimination (social risk factor) on stress (outcome). Methods: Data were collected from October 2012 to February 2013 ( N = 340) from adult members of the Kettle and Stony Point First Nation community in Ontario, Canada. The outcome was perceived stress; risk factor, racial discrimination; and compensatory factor, cultural resilience. Control variables included individual (education, sociability) and family (marital status, socioeconomic status) resilience resources and demographics (age and gender). The model was tested using sequential regression. Results: The risk factor, racial discrimination, increased stress across steps of the sequential model, while cultural resilience had an opposite modest effect on stress levels. In the final model with all variables, age and gender were significant, with the former having a negative effect on stress and women reporting higher levels of stress than males. Education, marital status, and socioeconomic status (household income) were not significant in the model. The model had R 2 = 0.21 and adjusted R 2 = 0.18 and semipartial correlation (squared) of 0.04 and 0.01 for racial discrimination and cultural resilience, respectively. Conclusions: In this study, cultural resilience compensated for the detrimental effect of racial discrimination on stress in a modest manner. These findings may support the development of programs and services fostering First Nations culture, pending further study.