A new generation of public health professionals are mapping the links between institutionalized oppression and trauma.
In last summer’s New York Times Magazine feature, “Racism’s Psychological Toll”, Dr. Monnica Williams is advocating for the inclusion of racism as a cause for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the DSM-V (the manual for diagnosing psychological disorders).
Her research suggests that the experience of being stigmatized and marginalized by society itself can cause PTSD.
As I thought more about the potential links between oppression, stress and trauma, it reminded me of the construct of stereotype threat, documented by social psychologists Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson in 1995.
Stereotype threat shows that our performance of a task can be impaired by our knowledge of negative stereotypes associated with our identity groups.
Researchers have narrowed down three reasons why: elevated levels of stress that impair the prefrontal cortex and one’s ability to access memory centers, increase in behavior monitoring, and increased suppression of the negative stereotype.
Imagine a nurse working the night shift who, looking at a patient’s chart, puzzles over the unusually high dose listed for a medication.
She wonders whether to call the attending doctor at his home. She remembers how he insulted her abilities last time she called him at home. So she skips the call and administers the dose anyway.
This is stereotype threat in action.
There are decades of research on stereotype threat, yet in my literature review, I did not find teams consistently connecting stereotype threat with longer-term mental health consequences.
Could there be a connection between the elevated stress levels documented in stereotype threat and the development of chronic stress disorders like PTSD?
What would happen to a person exposed to situations that trigger stereotype threat repeatedly, hour by hour, day by day, year after year?
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