Steffen has counseled Spanish-speaking immigrants in Utah dealing with stress and depression. He says recent immigrants don’t seem to feel much racism, possibly because they often don’t understand English yet. Their stress is more related to living in a new culture. Latinos who have lived in the United States for several years and have become more aware of how other people are treating them seem to experience more racism, he says.
He and co-author Matthew Bowden, a BYU graduate student, studied a group of 168 Hispanic immigrants who had been in the United States for an average of five years. Steffen and Bowden examined a number of explanations for the interaction of the three principle factors; sleep, racism and depression.
“We’ve looked at it several ways,” Steffen says. “Statistically, the stronger case was for sleep being the link between racism and depression.”
Knowing that quality of sleep is tied to physical effects like blood pressure and the immune system, Steffen hopes his new study will encourage further research into the way stressors such as racism can affect sleep and, consequently, health.
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