Discrimination and Psychological Well-Being: Exploring the Links between Perceived Discrimination and Anxiety, Depression, and Social Cognition in Black Individuals with Heightened Paranoia

<div class="page" title="Page 2"> <div class="layoutArea"> <div class="column"> Discrimination has been associated with various adverse mental health outcomes (Anglin et al., 2021). Furthermore, increased levels of perceived discrimination have been linked to elevated symptoms of paranoia (Combs et al., 2006). Moreover, there&rsquo;s little work exploring factors that may mitigate the influence of discrimination among Black individuals with heightened paranoia. The present study aims to examine the relationship between perceived discrimination and psychological well-being, specifically anxiety symptoms, depression symptoms, and social cognition, in a population of Black Americans age 18-35 experiencing elevated levels of paranoia. We used data from a larger neuroimaging study to run linear regressions between self-report measures of perceived discrimination and self-report measures of depression and anxiety symptoms. We also ran a linear regression between perceived discrimination and scores on a social cognition assessment, the Reading the Eyes in the Mind test. Additionally, we looked at the moderating effects of perceived control on these relationships. Findings suggest a significant positive relationship between perceived discrimination and anxiety symptoms as well as a trending moderating effect of perceived control on the relationship between perceived discrimination and depression symptoms. This expands upon the existing research on perceived discrimination and mental health outcomes by extending it to a sample of Black individuals with elevated levels of paranoia. It may serve as a guide for future research in this area as well as research on protective factors for perceived discrimination. </div> </div> </div>