Racial/Ethnic Discrimination, Anxiety, and Suicidal Thoughts Among Ethnoracially Minoritized College Students

Rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviors have disproportionately increased among ethnoracially minoritized college students. Despite growing evidence suggesting racial/ethnic discrimination may confer suicide-related risk, less is known about mechanisms underlying this relation. The present study aimed to clarify the potential role of anxiety in the association between racial/ethnic discrimination and suicidal thoughts. Participants (N = 747; 61% female; 63% U.S. born) were college students ages 18-29 years old (M = 19.84; SD = 2.22) who identified from an ethnoracially minoritized background (34% Asian, 33% Latinx/Hispanic, 23% Black, and 10% as other ethnoracially minoritized group). They were recruited from a minority-serving institution in the Northeast United States, and completed a battery of surveys online. Findings from multiple hierarchical linear regression models and bootstrapping procedures suggest there is a direct association between racial/ethnic discrimination and suicidal thoughts among Black college students only, though not among college students identifying as Latinx, Asian, and other race/ethnicity. Further, there was an indirect association between racial/ethnic discrimination and suicidal thoughts through generalized anxiety, though not race-based anxiety or social anxiety, across different ethnoracially minoritized groups. This information would help improve the cultural responsiveness of suicide prevention strategies for college students by refining identification of individuals at greatest risk for the harmful effects of racial/ethnic discrimination and providing more refined targets for intervention. Public Policy Relevance Statement Findings from the present study demonstrate the importance of accounting for experiences of racial and ethnic discrimination in the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of suicide-related risk, particularly among ethnoracially minoritized college students. This research improves the cultural responsiveness of suicide prevention strategies to help combat the racial and ethnic disparities in suicidal behaviors among college students.