New psychology research indicates that religion provided little protection against racism-induced mental health issues among Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings have been published in the Journal of Religion and Health.
The study was based on a body of research known as minority stress theory. Developed by researchers in the 1990s, the theory suggests that members of minority communities face an increased risk of experiencing mental health issues. The unique systemic barriers and experiences that come with being a member of a marginalized group can lead to psychological distress, including depression and anxiety.
“I was interested in this topic for three reasons,” explained study author Fanhao Nie, an associate professor of sociology at Valdosta State University and a public fellow at the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonpartisan research organization.
“First, there has been a sharp increase in anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic. As an Asian living in the United States through the pandemic, this wave of anti-Asian racism is personally relevant to me, which has prompted me to examine the social and health implications of anti-Asian racism in the Asian and Asian American community.
“Second, the relationship between religion and health is complex and dynamic. I have always been intrigued to investigate which aspects of religiosity may protect one’s health, while which aspects of religiosity may do the opposite. In the context of anti-Asian racism and its possible mental health challenges, my ongoing research interest in religion and health has become a natural fit.”
“Third, there is a paucity of sociological research examining the relationship among racism, mental health, and religious coping among Asians and Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The study included 330 Asian-American adults who lived in various regions of the United States. The participants completed the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale, a widely used assessment of mental health. They also indicated how often they had experienced subtle racism (such as feeling viewed with suspicion because of their race) or blatant racism (such as being called an ethnic slur) in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Finally, the participants completed an assessment of positive and negative religious coping. Positive religious coping includes things such as looking for a stronger connection with God, trying to see how God might be using a situation to strengthen a person, and focusing on religion to stop worrying about problems. Negative religious coping includes things such as wondering whether they had been abandoned God had abandoned me, feeling punished by God, and questioning the power of God.
As expected, Nie found that participants who reported more frequent experience with subtle and/or blatant racism tended to experience more depression, anxiety, and stress.
“Racism is harmful to the mental health of Asians and Asian Americans,” he told PsyPost. “My study results suggest that even after controlling for multiple demographic variables, racism, particularly subtle racism, remained statistically significant to worse depression, anxiety, and stress among Asians and Asian Americans. The coefficient of subtle racism was not only statistically significant, but also fairly large.”
But the researcher was surprised to find that positive religious coping did not appear to buffer Asian Americans against the harmful effects of racism. “I think this may be due to the fact that during the pandemic, many religious services were cancelled or converted to virtual meetings, the resulting lack of social interactions with one’s own religious group may have possibly dampened the positive influences of religiosity on one’s mental health, particularly when one has to cope with adversity such as racism,” he explained. “Future research conducted after the pandemic may want to better investigate this surprising finding as well as my speculation above.”
Negative religious coping, on the other hand, was associated with worse mental health in the face of racism. “Contrary to conventional wisdom, religiosity did not provide any mental health protection to Asians and Asian Americans when they dealt with racism. Instead, negative religious coping — religious beliefs that cast doubt on God, view God as distant and punitive, etc. — may worsen the deleterious effects of racism on mental health,” Nie explained.
The study also uncovered variations among ethnic and religious groups. “Asians and Asian Americans is a very diverse group,” Nie told PsyPost. “Asian Indians and Asians following Hinduism and Islam were at particularly higher risk for the harmful mental health impacts from negative religious coping.”
The study controlled for a variety of factors, including religiosity, sex, marital status, age, number of children, education, employment status, family income, length of residence in current address, and residential environment. But as with any study, the new research includes some caveats.
“In my research, I adopted religious measures from national surveys which were based on predominantly white, Protestant samples. Therefore, there may be some religious beliefs and practices that are uniquely Asian that my survey was not able to capture,” Nie explained.
“For example, in my study, I found that Asian Hindus and Asian Muslims were particularly vulnerable to the deleterious mental health effects from negative religious coping. But why Asian Hindus and Asian Muslims? It may be possible that some unique Hindu or Islamic beliefs and practices that were not adequately measured when using conventional religious measures are responsible for the Asian Hindu and Asian Muslim exceptions. I hope that in my future research, I will be able to use religious measures tailored to Asian religious culture to unpack this puzzle.”
“Stress can be cumulative and it may exert long term impacts on one’s health,” Nie added. “Therefore, it would be interesting and important to study the cumulative stress of racism, its long term health impacts, and how Asians and Asian Americans use religion to cope with both beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The study was titled: “Asian Hate, Minority Stress, and Religious Coping: A Study of Asian and Asian American Adults in the USA During the COVID‑19 Pandemic“.
