1 - (SYM 48) Racial Trauma and Well-being; How Racism-related Stress and Trauma Influences Various Well-being Outcomes Among Black Young Adults

Years of racism and oppression have resulted in racial trauma in Communities of Color (Comas-Diaz et al., 2019). Racial trauma refers to a traumatic injury due to sudden, emotionally painful, and uncontrollable racist encounters (Carter et al., 2017). To discover pathways to healing, the relationships between racial trauma symptoms and well-being need to be further analyzed. Although experiencing racial discrimination is associated with lower well-being among Black individuals (Priest et al., 2020), the relationship between racial trauma and well-being has yet to be examined. Further analyzing racial trauma’s influence on the well-being of Black individuals will pave the way toward mental health interventions designed to support people affected by racial trauma. The present study will explore various aspects of well-being and how racial trauma is related to each type of well-being. SEM was used to quantify the relationships between racial trauma and subjective, social, psychological, and overall well-being among 417 Black adults. Racial trauma was measured with the Trauma Symptoms of Discrimination Scale, which focuses on the anxiety-related traumatic impacts of discrimination (Williams et al., 2023). Three subdomains of the TSDS, including worry about safety and the future, feeling alienated from others, and hypervigilance, were evaluated. SEM analyses revealed that racial trauma was linked to lower subjective (β= -0.26, C.I = -0.37:-0.14), psychological (β= -0.17, C.I = -0.28:-0.05), and overall well-being (β= -0.18, C.I = -0.30:-0.06). Racial trauma was not significantly associated with social well-being. Hypervigilance and alienation were associated with lower subjective well-being, while alienation was linked to lower overall, psychological, and social well-being. Worrying about safety and the future was linked to higher overall and subjective well-being, suggesting it may serve as an adaptive coping mechanism against future racist experiences. This study confirms that heightened racial trauma correlates with lower subjective, psychological, and overall well-being. However, social well-being, such as a sense of belonging and having a meaningful role in society, remained unaffected. Strengthening social well-being may be a critical intervention strategy for racial trauma recovery and healing. Future research should examine whether social well-being buffers the impact of racial trauma on mental health outcomes. This study advances efforts to identify pathways for healing from racial trauma among Black adults.