Image: AWARE-Studyteam, f.l.t.r.: Prof. Dr. Aleksandra Kaurin, Lukas Braun, Julia Riuzki, Cara Wicher, Nicolas Mejeritski, Ece Aleyna Demirgüneş, Hannah Matz, Lindita Zeqa, Prof. Dr. Anna Baumert

Numerous studies indicate that ethnic minority children and adolescents in particular have an increased long-term risk of developing a mental disorder (Dingoyan et al., 2017; Pachter et al., 2009). One possible explanation is that those affected are frequently confronted with discrimination (e.g. devaluation, unequal treatment) in their everyday lives (Pascoe & Smart Richman, 2009), which accumulate into vulnerability to mental disorders (Benner et al., 2018). At the same time, however, experiences of discrimination and associated daily stress processes in the lives of children and adolescents who were born in Germany as children of migrants or refugees, or who fled to Germany as children themselves, have not been sufficiently studied (von Lersner et al., 2015).

The aim of the project is to systematically investigate discriminatory and racist experiences in the everyday lives of children and adolescents. Our goal is to characterize the specifics of the stress and coping experiences of affected youth, which may plausibly account for the development of mental disorders. Such so-called intensive longitudinal data collection is an important key to our understanding of long-term accumulation processes of the stress experience of affected individuals because the experiences captured are precisely those that are of central importance to participating adolescents. In the long term, this empirical data basis will lay the foundation for discussing the significance of necessary racism-sensitive transformations in the care structures for children and adolescents. This, in turn, will help develop and test measures for more adequate psychotherapeutic care for affected persons in Germany (and beyond).

Collaborator: Ursula Moffitt, Wheaton College Massachusetts

References:

Benner, A. D., Wang, Y., Shen, Y., Boyle, A. E., Polk, R., & Cheng, Y. P. (2018). Racial/ethnic discrimination and well-being during adolescence: A meta-analytic review. American Psychologist, 73(7), 855.

Dingoyan, D., Schulz, H., Kluge, U., Penka, S., Vardar, A., von Wolff, A., Strehle, J., Wittchen, H. U., Koch, U., Heinz, A. & Mösko, M. (2017). Lifetime prevalence of mental disorders among first and second generation individuals with Turkish migration backgrounds in Germany. BMC Psychiatry, 17(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-017-1333-z

Pachter, L. M. & Coll, C. G. (2009). Racism and Child Health: A Review of the Literature and Future Directions. Journal of Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics, 30(3), 255–263.

Pascoe, E. A. & Smart Richman, L. (2009). Perceived discrimination and health: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 135(4), 531–554. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016059

von Lersner, U., Pleger, M., Baschin, K., Morina, N. & Fydrich, T. (2015). Psychische Belastung von Jugendlichen. Zeitschrift für Klinische Psychologie und Psychotherapie, 44(3), 147–158. https://doi.org/10.1026/1616-3443/a000306