About this poster

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Panel information
Panel 7. Health and Wellbeing

Abstract

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Background: Research has shown that Black and Latiné youth experience significantly higher rates of traumatic childhood experiences, with a particular emphasis on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs; Maguire-Jack et al., 2020). Recently, there has been a call to expand ACEs to encompass developmental trauma (DT), which better captures complex and chronic trauma many Black and Latiné youth experience (e.g., racism; Cruz et al., 2022). Systemic racism and other forms of discrimination increase mental health difficulties and executive dysfunction, two areas that attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) also affects. Despite the higher rates of trauma experienced by youth with ADHD, there has been little research examining the impact race-based trauma has on Black and Latiné youth with ADHD. Due to this increased risk of experiencing discrimination and trauma during development that Black and/or Latiné youth face, it is critical to examine the combined effect that they have on youth outcomes and wellbeing.

Methods: Participants are Black and/or Latiné adolescents with ADHD in grades 6th-12th who completed self-report measures of depression, anxiety, ACEs, and discrimination. Teens provided separate self-reports of daily discrimination and lifetime experience of discriminatory events. DT symptoms were collected through a semi-structured interview. Community violence (CV) was calculated as a combined score of self-reported community experiences and qualitative semi-structured interview. The Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia was conducted to determine participants’ current mental health diagnoses. Administration of the WISC-IV determined working memory and processing speed. Separate path analyses were performed between DT, ACEs, and CV and DT and both discrimination indexes in order to accurately assess each concept.

Results: For the first path analysis, DT symptoms were associated with number of diagnoses (β=.38), depression (β=.73), and anxiety (β=.48), ACEs were associated with depression (β=-.38), and CV was associated with number of diagnoses (β=.23). In a second analysis, DT symptoms were still associated with number of diagnoses (β=.30), depression (β=.60), and anxiety (β=.36) and both everyday discrimination and lifetime exposure to discrimination was associated with number of diagnoses (β=.71, β=-.50, respectively). For the third path analysis, DT symptoms were associated with both working memory (β=.39) and processing speed (β=.37), ACEs were associated with both working memory (β=-.50) and processing speed (β=-.20), and CV was associated with working memory (β=.37). In the final path analysis, DT, daily discrimination, and lifetime exposure to discrimination were all associated with working memory (β=.23, β=-.22, β=.24, respectively) and processing speed (β=.25, β=.26, β=-.22, respectively).

Discussion: DT symptoms, daily discrimination, and violence exposures may be better indicators of internalizing symptoms and cognitive capacity, beyond the scope of ACEs and lifetime exposure to discrimination. In fact, the limitation of ACEs’ exclusive examination of past or total experiences of childhood trauma may overemphasize a false standard of “resilience,” ignoring the impact of continual emotional and cognitive distress. Therefore, a broad definition of DT and inclusion of symptomology to address how adolescent’s experience trauma, may prove to be a stronger indicator of mental health difficulties than simply reporting number of experiences. For executive functioning, daily discrimination and lifetime discrimination had opposite effects on working memory and processing speed. It could be that current experiences of trauma symptoms and discrimination may produce a need for hypervigilance and ability to process information quickly due to a heightened ability to detect distressing stimuli. On the other hand, lifetime exposure to harmful discrimination may become burdensome and reduce long-term ability to quickly respond to new information. Overall, moving beyond ACEs is necessary to understand how chronic and complex trauma affects Black and/or Latiné adolescents. This understanding will support the call to collectively create truly anti-racist and liberation models of healing.

Author information

Author	Role
Victoria R. Grant, Loyola University Chicago	Presenting author
Marcus A. Flax, Loyola University Chicago, United States	Non-presenting author
Terumi S. Randle, Loyola University Chicago, United States	Non-presenting author
Zoe R. Smith, Loyola University Chicago, United States	Non-presenting author

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