Buried Hatchets, Marked Locations: Forgiveness, Everyday Racial Discrimination, and African American Men's Depressive Symptomatology.

Buried Hatchets, Marked Locations: Forgiveness, Everyday Racial Discrimination, and African American Men's Depressive Symptomatology.
Am J Orthopsychiatry. 2016 Oct 27;
Authors: Powell W, Banks KH, Mattis JS
Abstract
Everyday racial discrimination (ERD) is linked to pronounced depressive symptomatology among African American men. Yet, many African American men do not experience depressive symptoms following ERD exposure often because they use positive coping strategies that offset its effects. Granting forgiveness is 1 coping strategy associated with less depression. However, extant findings about the mental health benefits of forgiveness are somewhat mixed and pay scarce attention to offenses which are fleeting, historically rooted, and committed outside of close personal relationships. Evidence further suggest age-related differences in forgiveness, ERD exposure, and depressive symptoms. We explore the extent to which 3 strategies of granting forgiveness of ERD-letting go of negative emotion (negative release), embracing positive emotion (positive embrace), or combining both (combined)-are associated with less depressive symptomatology in 674 African American men (ages 18 through 79). Building on past findings, we also test whether these forgiveness strategies moderate the ERD-depressive symptoms relationship for men in different age groups (18 through 25, 26 through 39, and 40). Higher combined and negative release forgiveness wer...

Source: The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry - October 28, 2016 Category: Psychiatry Tags: Am J Orthopsychiatry Source Type: research