Discrimination, critical consciousness, and mental health in American youth of color

Abstract

To resist and cope with oppression, youth of color may use the process of critical consciousness which involves understanding racial injustices (critical reflection), developing motivation to fight these injustices (critical motivation), and taking action to enact sociopolitical change (critical action). However, little is known about how each dimension of critical consciousness affects mental health in adolescents of color. In a sample of 367 ethnically and racially diverse American adolescents of color (age range = 13–17; 68.9% girls, 28.6% boys, and 2.5% gender minority; 84.4% US‐born), we conducted multivariate regressions in Mplus to examine the cross‐sectional links between each critical consciousness dimension (reflection, motivation, and action) and mental health outcomes (anxiety, depression, and stress) over and above the impact of everyday discrimination. We also investigated the interaction between critical consciousness and discrimination in predicting mental health outcomes. Controlling for age, gender, nativity, and social class, we found that discrimination and critical action were both positively associated with anxiety, depression, and stress. For our covariates, girls and gender minority adolescents reported worse outcomes. No interactions were significant. Overall, critical action, while necessary to enact societal change, may have a complex relationship with youth's depression, anxiety, and psychological stress symptoms and warrants careful exploration. Future research should focus on understanding the longitudinal mechanisms of critical action and how we can maximize the benefits by protecting youth from those negative effects.

INTRODUCTION

Youth of color in the United States live in an unequal society and experience daily sociopolitical injustices such as ethnic‐racial discrimination (Fisher et al., 2000; Rosenbloom & Way, 2004). Indeed, ethnic‐racial discrimination is not only a harmful stressor that is associated with numerous negative outcomes (Benner et al., 2018)—especially in youth and adolescence relative to adulthood (Schmitt et al., 2014)—but it is also a very common occurrence. For example, almost a third of US high school students report racism in their short lifetimes and in turn report poorer mental health (Mpofu et al., 2022). Overall, understanding and taking action against the oppressive social systems that perpetuated racism and discrimination is essential to resisting these injustices, enacting change, and in turn fostering well‐being among youth of color (Heberle et al., 2020; Hope & Spencer, 2017).

Critical consciousness

Critical consciousness, first coined by Paulo Freire (1973), is a process by which oppressed people foster a deep understanding of the world and one's place within it to challenge and change oppressive conditions and constructs, acting as a catalyst for sociopolitical change. In line with Freire, Watts et al. (2003) have contributed significantly to the understanding of sociopolitical development, detailing how individuals and communities gain the skills to recognize and respond to systemic oppression and suggesting that an increased understanding of societal structures and an individual's position within them can drive transformative action and resistance. Building on these theoretical foundations, contemporary conceptualizations of critical consciousness involve three dimensions: critical reflection, critical motivation, and critical action (Diemer et al., 2022; Watts et al., 2011). Critical reflection refers to how youth engage in a thorough analysis of their experiences and social inequalities such as endorsing that certain racial or ethnic groups have fewer chances to get ahead. Critical motivation refers to how youth develop a sense of empowerment to enact change such as endorsing that it is important to correct social and economic inequality. Finally, critical action refers to how youth take collective action to address injustices like joining a protest march, political demonstration, or a political meeting.

Critical consciousness development is crucial during adolescence, encompassing early, middle, and late stages (Heberle et al., 2020). In early adolescence, individuals begin to form their foundational critical awareness, often catalyzed by significant socio‐political events (Kennedy et al., 2020). This stage sets the groundwork for further developmental competencies and engagement. As adolescents transition into middle adolescence, they experience a deepening of self‐awareness and socio‐political understanding, linking critical consciousness components to key socioemotional outcomes such as depression and academic engagement (Godfrey et al., 2019). Late adolescence sees the maturation of these experiences into more active engagements, where higher levels of critical consciousness are associated with clearer vocational identities and greater career commitment (Diemer & Blustein, 2006; Tyler et al., 2020). The longitudinal evidence also suggests that critical consciousness tends to increase over time during adolescence, with different domains of critical consciousness being reciprocally positively associated (Heberle et al., 2020). This nuanced understanding of critical consciousness across different adolescent stages underscores its role in fostering resilience against negative outcomes and promoting positive developmental trajectories, essential for challenging and changing oppressive conditions. As ethnic‐racial discrimination's negative impacts on well‐being are notably heightened during adolescence (Benner et al., 2018), there is a critical need to understand how youth of color cope with such experiences to prevent negative mental health problems.

Critical consciousness and mental health

The Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory (PVEST) posits that critical consciousness can diminish the harmful impact of racism on youth's mental health by fostering feelings of control and the capability to challenge racism actively (Hope & Spencer, 2017). As such, there has been a growing interest in critical consciousness and its association with mental health outcomes in youth of color, especially regarding critical reflection and critical motivation. However, the literature on these dimensions has yielded inconsistent findings. For example, critical reflection has been associated with positive youth development (Bowers et al., 2020; Tyler et al., 2020) and lower substance use (Lardier et al., 2020; Opara et al., 2022; Peterson et al., 2011) in adolescents of color. However, complex associations emerged in a person‐centered analysis conducted by Godfrey et al. (2019), wherein a profile where youth who reported more critical motivation and low critical reflection experienced fewer depressive symptoms than those in other groups, while those in a profile characterized by more critical reflection and less critical motivation reported greater depressive symptoms.

Despite these conflicting findings with respect to reflection and motivation, the mental health impacts of critical action have been vastly neglected in the literature (Diemer et al., 2021). Discriminatory experiences can indeed be catalysts for anti‐racist activism among Black youth (Anyiwo et al., 2018; Hope & Spencer, 2017). Anti‐racist activism offers a vital means for individuals, particularly Black youth, to resist and cope with racial injustices that they, their families, and their communities face (Hope & Spencer, 2017). Racially marginalized youth harness activism as a coping mechanism, seeking refuge from oppression through self‐expression, community bonds, and societal transformation (Anyiwo et al., 2020). This form of activism not only aims to reduce the prevalence of racism, thereby partially alleviating its public health burden on society, but it also may help individuals themselves adaptively cope with discrimination, as participating in anti‐racist activism helps navigate the oppressive systems imposed on them (Anyiwo et al., 2018; Hope et al., 2018) by fostering feelings of control and the capability to challenge racism actively (Neblett, 2023).

However, empirical work has sometimes documented positive associations between action and youth mental health problems. Young activists often grapple with emotions like frustration, sadness, and anger stemming from perceived injustices (Bañales et al., 2021; Kelly, 2018; Smith & Hope, 2020). The consistent weight of advocating for change, coupled with the often slow pace of tangible results, could be draining for youth, potentially inducing feelings of stress and burden (Anyiwo et al., 2020). For instance, a study conducted by Heberle et al. (2022) examining the association between critical action and mental health (Ryff's psychological well‐being and depressive symptoms) in a sample of monoracial Black adolescents found interpersonal action (e.g., challenging peers who make discriminatory remarks) to predict higher depressive symptoms. Interestingly, communally (e.g., attending a meeting on an issue related to race, ethnicity, discrimination, and/or segregation) and politically focused (e.g., attending a protest on an issue related to race, ethnicity, discrimination, and/or segregation) forms of action were not associated with depressive symptoms in this sample and no form of action was related to psychological wellbeing. In contrast, critical action can bring youth of color a greater sense of accomplishment and solidarity (Diemer et al., 2021). Qualitatively, young activists have identified a sense of belonging, purpose, and commitment, and activism as a more productive emotional outlet as benefits outweigh the costs of activism (Conner, Crawford, & Galioto, 2023). However, a recent systematic review of relations between critical consciousness and health outcomes similarly supported that, given the current state of the quantitative literature, the implications for critical action on mental health outcomes in adolescents of color are unclear (Maker Castro et al., 2022). The current study attempts to add to this literature and provide additional clarity surrounding the mental health implications of critical action.

Interplay between critical consciousness and discrimination

Discrimination and critical consciousness may interact together to predict mental health outcomes in youth of color. Hope and Spencer (2017) suggest that the awareness of injustices and the threat of racial discrimination can lead to action, which itself is used to cope with discrimination (Hope & Spencer, 2017). However, it is possible that bidirectional associations exist between critical consciousness and discrimination. On one hand, higher exposure to threats brought upon by higher critical reflection, motivation, and action may lead youth to experience more discrimination (e.g., harassment by counter‐protestors; Conner, Greytak, et al., 2023). It is within the structural system of oppression that marginalized activists are at an increased risk of experiencing discriminatory events when they engage in actions—as it is one of the well‐documented costs associated with activism (e.g., Davenport & Trivedi, 2013). For instance, critical action has been associated with greater subsequent reports of discrimination (Ballard, 2016); functionally, thinking about and engaging in action may lead to situations where one becomes even more directly exposed to discriminatory structures and people. On the other hand, discrimination has been theorized as a catalyst for critical consciousness development (Anyiwo et al., 2018; Hope & Spencer, 2017). While there are likely complex bidirectional relations between these factors unfolding across adolescence, different critical consciousness dimensions may also interact with, or moderate, the effects of discrimination on mental health outcomes. While recent research suggests some buffering effects of critical consciousness on academic attitudes (Gale et al., 2023), critical consciousness's potential to buffer discrimination's harmful associations with mental health remains unclear.

Current study

Given the prevalence (e.g., English et al., 2020) and negative impacts of discrimination among youth of color (Benner et al., 2018), it is crucial to better understand how youth's understanding of systemic inequalities, as well as their motivation and efforts toward dismantling these inequalities impacts their psychological health. Critical consciousness is both informed by and informs experiences of discrimination and both have impacts on youth mental health; therefore, it is helpful to examine and assess the mental health impacts of dimensions of critical consciousness in the context of discrimination (and vice versa), as well the potential for discrimination and critical consciousness to interact in their association with mental health symptoms. The current cross‐sectional study uses multivariate regression analysis to assess the concurrent and relative impact of discrimination and critical consciousness dimensions on the different aspects of mental health (anxiety, depression, and stress) as well as their interactions among a diverse sample of adolescents of color from the US. The choice of age, social class, gender, and nativity as covariates is informed by documented findings highlighting significant differences in mental health symptoms based on such factors (de France et al., 2022; Keyes, 2006; Reiss, 2013; Tummala‐Narra & Claudius, 2013). Given that adolescence is a time of significant critical consciousness development and a time when discrimination is particularly associated with negative outcomes (Schmitt et al., 2014), it is crucial to understand the associations between discrimination, critical consciousness, and mental health during this key developmental stage. We expected discrimination to be positively associated with negative mental health outcomes. Considering the complex and inconsistent findings regarding critical consciousness associations with mental health among youth of color, we did not provide a priori hypotheses on the relationship of critical action with mental health outcomes, but generally expected reflection and motivation to promote better mental health (Maker Castro et al., 2022). Interactions between discrimination and critical consciousness dimensions were also treated as exploratory.

METHODS

Participants

Participants were 367 ethnically and racially diverse youth (M_age = 15.9, SD = 1.2) from across the United States. Almost 68.9% of participants selected “girl,” 28.6% “boy,” and 2.5% “other.” Most of the participants (84.4%) were US‐born. Our sample identified as middle class (41.1%); lower middle class (24.6%); working class (20.7%); poor (3.1%); upper middle class (9.2%); and affluent (1.4%). Regarding ethnic‐racial background, 42.2% were monoracial Black, 26.5% monoracial Latinx, 15.4% monoracial Asian, and 12.6% Multiracial/Multiethnic. The remaining 3.3% was split between monoracial Native Americans, monoracial Pacific Islanders, monoracial Middle Easterners/North Africans, and those that identified with a racial group not listed. Here, monoracial refers to participants selecting one racial background, e.g., Asian, and no other racial category box. Participant breakdown by geographical region was not assessed.

Procedure

All study procedures were approved by the Institutional Review Board. Eligibility criteria included identifying as a person of color, age range (13 to 17 years old), and living in the United States of America. All participants were recruited through Qualtrics' online research panel during the Fall of 2020, the mid‐COVID‐19 pandemic. First, participants' parents gave consent, followed by youth's assent. Second, participants filled out the survey assessing their mental health, experiences of discrimination, and critical consciousness. All non‐demographic measures were randomized to the participants. Finally, participants were compensated directly through Qualtrics panels.

Measures

Discrimination

Discrimination was assessed with the Everyday Discrimination Scale (Williams et al., 1997). Participants were asked: “In your day‐to‐day life, how often do any of the following things happen to you?” Then, they rated each of the nine items on a 5‐point Likert scale ranging from Never (0) to Almost every day (5). Participants were then invited to give attribution to their experience of discrimination. Overall, 71.4% of participants attributed discrimination to either ancestry/origin (25.3%), race (57.2%), shade of skin color (39.5%), or tribe (4.9%). A total mean score was created for the scale, with greater values indicating more discrimination. The measure had good internal consistency (α = .89).

Critical consciousness

Critical reflection, motivation, and action were assessed using the Short Critical Consciousness Scale (ShoCCS; Diemer et al., 2022). For the reflection (four items) and motivation (four items) subscales, participants indicated their agreement with statements on a 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 6 (Strongly Agree) Likert scale, with greater values indicating more reflection or motivation. Two mean scores were created with the four items from reflection and four items from motivation. For the action subscale (five items), participants indicated how often in the last year they had done the statement on a 1 (Never Did This) to 5 (At Least Once a Week) Likert scale. A mean score was created from the five items, with greater values indicating more frequent critical action. Reflection, motivation, and action subscales all had good internal consistency (α = .89, .88, and .86, respectively).

Mental health outcomes

Internalizing symptoms and stress were assessed using the 21‐item Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DAAS‐21; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995; Antony et al., 1998), with seven items per subscale (anxiety, depression, and stress). Participants indicated how much each statement applied to them over the past week on a 0 (Did not apply to me at all) to 3 (Applied to me very much or most of the time) Likert scale. The items were first summed for each subscale (anxiety, depression, and stress) to create a subscale score. In order to be comparable to the DAAS‐41 (i.e., the full measure), scores on the DASS‐21 must be multiplied by two to calculate the final score, with greater values indicating more symptoms. Each subscale; anxiety (α = .86), depression (α = .90), and stress (α = .83) had good internal consistency.

Covariates

Covariates included youth's age, social class, gender, and nativity. Participants indicated their social class using an adapted measure of perceived social status from Diemer et al., 2013 (poor, working class, middle class, and affluent) by separating middle class into three additional categories: lower middle class, middle class, and upper‐middle class, with higher numbers (range = 1–6) indicating higher social class. For gender, we created two dummy variables (“girl” and “gender minority”) with “boy” as the reference group. For nativity, a dichotomous code was also created such that participants born in the U.S. were coded as 0 or those born outside of the U.S. were coded as 1.

RESULTS

Analyses

A multivariate regression model was conducted in Mplus 8.4 using a maximum likelihood estimator on 367 participants. Qualtrics Research Panel's coordinators programmed the survey such that participants were required to respond to all questions; thus, we had no missing data. Our model included anxiety, depression, and stress as outcomes, discrimination, critical reflection, critical motivation, and critical action as predictors, and age, gender, social class, and nativity as covariates. We also included three interaction terms between all three critical consciousness dimensions and discrimination (i.e., discrimination*reflection, discrimination*motivation, and discrimination*action), with critical consciousness conceptually regarded as a moderator that potentially impacted, how discrimination was associated with mental health symptoms. Continuous predictors and covariates (discrimination, critical reflection, critical motivation, critical action, age, and social class) were all grand mean‐centered. Table 1 presents variable means, standard deviations, range of values, and correlations among our study variables. Since the current study used a general discrimination measure (Williams et al., 1997's Everyday Discrimination Scale), where participants reported on discriminatory events and later gave attributions for why the experience occurred, sensitivity analyses were conducted using 262 participants (71.4% of the total sample), who reported that the discrimination they experienced was primarily ethnic‐racial discrimination (i.e., discrimination based on race, ethnicity, “tribe,” or skin color). A final sensitivity analysis was conducted by replacing the mean total score of critical action by each individual item (five in total), making five separate models, to investigate how each item of the critical action measure was associated with the outcomes (depression, anxiety, and stress).

TABLE 1.

Variable means and model correlations.

	M (SD)	Range	1.	2.	3.	4.	5.	6.	7.	8.	9.	10.	11.	12.
1. Anxiety	15.2 (10.9)	0–42
2. Depression	17.4 (12.0)	0–42	0.72**
3. Stress	17.7 (10.2)	0–42	0.80**	0.78**
4. Discrimination	2.5 (0.9)	1–5	0.42**	0.33**	0.36**
5. Critical reflection	4.3 (1.3)	1–6	0.08	0.10	0.18**	0.12*
6. Critical motivation	4.8 (1.2)	1–6	0.01	0.01	0.08	0.00	0.65**
7. Critical action	1.8 (1.0)	1–5	0.36**	0.29**	0.33**	0.40**	0.02	−0.10
8. Age	15.9 (1.2)	13–17	−0.01	0.01	−0.03	0.08	0.09	0.09	0.06
9. Social class	4 (1.1)	1–6	−0.02	−0.08	−0.10	−0.06	−0.12*	−0.15**	−0.00	−0.11*
10. Foreign‐born	0 (.36)	0–1	−0.10	−0.08	−0.06	−0.11*	0.04	0.01	−0.03	−0.02	0.06
11. Gender minority	0 (0.2)	0–1	0.10*	0.13*	0.09	0.02	0.08	0.09	0.08	−0.04	−0.09	−0.02
12. Girl gender	1 (0.5)	0–1	0.10	0.07	0.11*	−0.01	0.20**	0.22**	−0.07	0.08	0.07	0.03	−0.24**

Note: Means (SD) are provided for parameters 1–8. Medians (standard deviation) are provided for parameters 9–12.

^* p < .05.

^** p < .01.

Regressions

Table 2 presents the standardized coefficients from the multivariate regression model. Everyday discrimination was positively associated with anxiety, depression, and stress. Over and above discrimination, critical action was also positively associated with anxiety, depression, and stress. However, critical reflection and motivation were not associated with any outcome. We also did not find any significant interactions between critical consciousness dimensions and discrimination predicting our three outcomes. Each regression model accounted for 26%, 19%, and 23% of the variance in anxiety, depression, and stress, respectively.

TABLE 2.

Standardized estimates of the model (N = 367).

	Outcome
	Anxiety (R 2 = .26)		Depression (R 2 = .19)		Stress (R 2 = .23)
Predictors	β (SE)	p‐value	β (SE)	p‐value	β (SE)	p‐value
Discrimination	3.39 (0.54)	<.001	2.80 (0.63)	<.001	2.51 (0.52)	<.001
Critical reflection	0.01 (0.69)	.993	0.40 (0.79)	.618	1.03 (0.66)	.119
Critical motivation	−0.16 (0.68)	.815	−0.56 (0.78)	.473	−0.08 (0.65)	.901
Critical action	2.32 (0.58)	<.001	1.92 (0.67)	.004	2.24 (0.55)	<.001
Discrimination × reflection	−0.27 (0.70)	.698	−0.88 (0.81)	.276	−0.03 (0.67)	.965
Discrimination × motivation	0.85 (0.68)	.212	1.57 (0.79)	.046	0.39 (0.65)	.556
Discrimination × action	0.59 (0.43)	.175	0.89 (0.50)	.073	0.46 (0.41)	.262
Age	−0.46 (0.50)	.354	−0.22 (0.58)	.707	−0.84 (0.48)	.081
Social class	−0.01 (0.50)	.991	−0.69 (0.58)	.232	−0.81 (0.48)	.090
Foreign‐born	−1.79 (1.36)	.189	−1.81 (1.57)	.250	−.82 (1.30)	.531
Gender minority	0.86 (0.33)	.010	1.15 (0.39)	.003	0.59 (0.32)	.064
Girl gender	3.76 (1.13)	<.001	3.42 (1.31)	.009	3.25 (1.09)	.003

Note: Significant estimates are bolded.

With respect to covariates, girls, compared to boys, reported more anxiety, depression, and stress and gender‐minority youth reported greater anxiety and depression. Age, social class, and nativity were not associated with any outcomes.

Sensitivity analyses

We conducted sensitivity analyses with a subsample of 262 participants who had responded ancestry/origin, race, shade of skin color, or tribe as the source of their experienced discrimination. No significant differences emerged in our main predictors (see Table 3) between the original regression analyses and the sensitivity analyses. All interactions between critical consciousness dimensions and discrimination remained nonsignificant. Gender differences observed in our main models were no longer significant. By contrast, age became negatively associated with anxiety and stress.

TABLE 3.

Sensitivity analysis: standardized estimates (N = 262).

	Outcome
	Anxiety (R 2 = .27)		Depression (R 2 = .20)		Stress (R 2 = .26)
Predictors	β (SE)	p‐value	β (SE)	p‐value	β (SE)	p‐value
Discrimination	3.26 (0.63)	<.001	2.75 (0.71)	<.001	2.28 (0.59)	<.001
Critical reflection	−0.17 (0.80)	.831	−0.73 (0.89)	.413	1.16 (0.75)	.120
Critical motivation	0.94 (0.79)	.238	1.77 (0.89)	.046	1.23 (0.74)	.099
Critical action	2.61 (0.72)	<.001	2.94 (0.80)	<.001	3.04 (0.67)	<.001
Discrimination × reflection	0.31 (0.85)	.716	−1.50 (0.96)	.118	−0.01 (0.80)	.991
Discrimination × motivation	0.41 (0.83)	.618	1.72 (0.93)	.064	−0.28 (0.77)	.723
Discrimination × action	0.09 (0.52)	.865	0.43 (0.58)	.461	−0.17 (0.49)	.726
Age	−1.20 (0.58)	.039	−0.30 (0.65)	.644	−1.10 (0.55)	.043
Social class	0.59 (0.58)	.306	−0.11 (0.65)	.868	−0.18 (0.54)	.741
Foreign‐born	−1.93 (1.55)	.214	−0.78 (1.74)	.655	0.06 (1.45)	.967
Gender minority	7.30 (4.34)	.092	5.79 (4.86)	.234	2.97 (4.07)	.464
Girl gender	2.32 (1.33)	.081	0.77 (1.49)	.605	1.70 (1.25)	.173

Note: Significant estimates are bolded.

When substituting the critical action mean score by each of the five critical action items, sensitivity analyses revealed that all action items were positively associated with anxiety, depression, and stress symptoms, except for item “Contacted a public official by phone, mail, or email to tell him/her how you felt about a particular social or political issue,” which was not significantly associated with depression but was positively associated with both anxiety and stress (see Table S1).

DISCUSSION

Critical consciousness development is primordial among youth of color, as it allows them to understand, take action against, and hopefully rectify some of the racial structural inequities levied against them in American society. Aspects of critical consciousness may also have direct relations to the mental health of youth of color, although these associations are not yet clear across this burgeoning literature (see Maker Castro et al., 2022 for review). Finally, critical consciousness, and particularly critical action, have been conceptualized as a coping mechanism that may interact with and mitigate the harmful effects of discrimination on mental health (Hope & Spencer, 2017); however, empirical research assessing these interactive effects is sparse. To better unpack the mental health implications of critical consciousness, as well as to examine whether and how these effects persist over and above discrimination and even interact with discrimination, we examined associations between everyday discrimination and critical consciousness (reflection, motivation, and action) and mental health outcomes (anxiety, depression, and stress symptoms) and their interactions among 367 ethnically/racially diverse American adolescents. As adolescence is a crucial period for critical consciousness development (Rapa & Geldhof, 2020) and a period where the negative effects of discrimination are heightened (Benner et al., 2018), our investigation offers new insight into all three critical consciousness dimensions within this specific context, especially critical action, which had been predominantly focused on emerging adulthood. Importantly, our sensitivity analyses also revealed that associations between critical consciousness dimensions, discrimination, and mental health outcomes remained the same when looking only at youth of color who reported that their discrimination was due to race/ethnicity.

Mental health impacts of discrimination and critical consciousness

Consistent with our hypothesis and prior findings in college students (e.g., Hope et al., 2018), higher levels of everyday discrimination predicted higher levels of anxiety, depression, and stress symptoms when controlling for dimensions of critical consciousness. However, contrary to our hypothesis, we did not find any significant associations between critical reflection or motivation and mental health outcomes. These findings are not supported by previous research, wherein reflection and motivation are often associated with fewer negative mental health symptoms (e.g., Godfrey et al., 2019; for a review, see Maker Castro et al., 2022). While reflection and motivation are essential components of critical consciousness, they are internal processes that do not translate into environmental changes without the component of action. Critical action represents the behavioral manifestation of these internal processes, which can lead to tangible changes in one's environment and, therefore, have a more direct impact on mental health outcomes. Hence, action could be the crucial step that bridges internal states with external change, potentially explaining its unique association with mental health outcomes in the presence of discrimination. That is, considering all aspects of critical consciousness, action seems to be more related to how one feels than thoughts and motivation around systemic issues. Several other studies exploring the mental health effects of critical reflection and motivation (e.g., Bowers et al., 2020; Lardier et al., 2020; Opara et al., 2022; Peterson et al., 2011); Tyler et al., 2020) have not accounted for all three key dimensions of critical consciousness (i.e., including action) as well as the effect of discrimination, a fundamental context against which critical consciousness operates. Our study implied that accounting for all critical consciousness dimensions at once and accounting for discrimination reveals that action is the aspect of critical consciousness most proximally related to mental health outcomes; this novel finding will, however, need to be replicated as assessed longitudinally.

Importantly, we found that greater critical action was associated with worse negative mental health (anxiety, depression, and stress symptoms). While critical consciousness is typically portrayed as a liberating process that generates feelings of hope and empowerment (French et al., 2020), confronting systemic oppression through action may lead to various negative effects, including stress and anxiety (Ballard & Ozer, 2016). In their examination of Black and Latinx 1st year college students, Hope et al. (2018) found a negative relationship between political activism and stress in Black students and a positive relationship between political activism and depression in Latinx students, within a 1‐year timeframe. They did not find direct associations between political activism and other mental health outcomes. In contrast to this study, action was associated with greater stress, depression, and anxiety symptoms in our adolescent sample. Divergent findings between these studies may be a function of developmental period (adolescence versus young adulthood) or time scale (i.e., cross‐sectional effects versus long‐term effects across an academic year), warranting further study. Of note, while our study's general community sample had a low critical action mean, our findings mirror Conner, Greytak, et al., 2023's quantitative examination of a highly critically active youth sample in which the costs identified from critical action were associated with worse mental health.

Additionally, the mental health impacts of critical action may also depend on the success of the actions themselves; successful actions may be associated with greater well‐being and less negative mental health, while factors like unsuccessful attempts at change, backlash to change efforts, the slow pace of systemic change, and “activist guilt” (i.e., the feeling that one is not doing enough activism) may contribute to burnout and negative mental health symptoms among youth (Conner, Crawford, & Galioto, 2023). Some literature also suggests that a negative mood may motivate change, thus critical action may result from high negative mood instead of predicting negative mood (Kim & Niederdeppe, 2013; Turner, 2007). For example, the process of learning about inequity can be overwhelming and in turn lead to increased negative emotions (Byrd, 2023). Because our study was cross‐sectional, we were unable to determine a temporal ordering of these potential associations. Overall, our findings may be driven by many other variables like negative mood or other mental health difficulties, and factors such as ethnic‐racial identity (Kiang et al., 2021) and ethnic‐racial socialization (Christophe et al., 2022), which have all been found to impact critical consciousness and/or mental health. Similarly, factors such as a sense of belonging to an activist community (Conner, Crawford, & Galioto, 2023) and emotional reflexivity (ongoing emotional self‐reflection in response to our ever‐changing lives and contexts; Sirriyeh, 2023) should be examined further as potential moderators and mediators of these associations. Given that critical action among youth is necessary to create a more just society and has notable positive impacts on well‐being (Bowers et al., 2020; Lardier et al., 2020), it will be important to parse through these factors to aid in mitigating the negative mental health impacts of action so the positive personal and societal impacts are emphasized.

Interplay between discrimination and critical consciousness

Interestingly, we did not find any significant interactions between discrimination and critical consciousness dimensions in predicting mental health outcomes. These null findings may suggest the presence of independent pathways through which discrimination and dimensions of critical consciousness—reflection, motivation, and action—affect mental health. For example, discrimination may exacerbate anxiety, depression, and stress through mechanisms such as heightened vigilance (Himmelstein et al., 2015) and rumination (Bernard et al., 2022), while critical consciousness may bolster psychological resilience, serving as a buffer or compensatory mechanism to maintain baseline mental health rather than altering the psychological impact of discrimination. This contradicts Hope et al. (2018) who found activism to be moderating the relationship between ethnic‐racial microaggressions and stress such that for highly politically active Black students, microaggressions more strongly predicted stress and anxiety at the end of freshman year while for highly politically active Latinx students, microaggressions were related to less stress and depression symptoms. Relative to the discrimination experiences assessed in the current study, microaggressions are, by definition, more subtle and ambiguous (but unfortunately very common) discrimination experiences (Sue et al., 2007). It is possible that critical action is a powerful enough factor to disrupt the mental health effects of these common but less severe discriminatory stressors, but not strong enough to interact with or buffer against higher‐intensity discrimination. The pattern of null interaction effects observed in our study underscores the complexity of these constructs and how and when they do and do not operate in tandem with one another. Further, these null interaction findings, support the notion that in the context of “regular” everyday discrimination, critical action and discrimination are associated with mental health outcomes in a cumulative (i.e., discrimination and action independently associated with worse mental health) rather than interactive manner. It is important to mention that the absence of interaction or buffering effects and the negative main effects of critical action do not diminish the importance of fostering critical consciousness as a tool for empowerment and psychological well‐being. Indeed, activist youth highlight that the pros of their activism outweigh the cons and highlight many positive outcomes of action, such as purpose in life and a sense of belonging, in addition to potential negative mental health effects that may follow from action such as stress and potential burnout (Conner, Crawford, & Galioto, 2023). Rather, our findings highlight the need for further exploration into how these factors operate in concert within the broader context of societal and individual psychological processes.

Covariates

Our analysis revealed that when compared to boys, girls and gender non‐conforming adolescents experienced more negative mental health. These findings are consistent with previous research demonstrating that girls and gender non‐conforming individuals tend to report higher rates of psychological distress when compared to boys (e.g., Stevens & Thijs, 2018; Mustanski & Liu, 2013). This may be due to a variety of intersectional factors (Crenshaw, 1991), including differences in gender socialization (e.g., girls are socialized to report their socioemotional health more openly; Wester et al., 2002) and stressors like gender‐ and/or race‐based discrimination (Hatchel et al., 2019; Human Rights Campaign, 2020).

Limitations

While the current study contributes to the literature by highlighting the mental health impacts of different dimensions of critical consciousness among youth of color, our study is not without its limitations. Our study was limited by its cross‐sectional design, and future longitudinal research may be able to move the field closer to understanding the more causal and even bidirectional/snowballing pathways at play (e.g., negative mental health resulting from discrimination and action may then bring higher critical reflection, motivation, and even subsequent action). Additionally, the present study used data collected during the COVID‐19 pandemic. It is well‐documented that youth's mental health decreased during this time, especially regarding anxiety, depression, and sleep disturbances due to multiple factors such as lockdown measures, closed or partially closed schools, social isolation lowered physical activity and increased screen time (Deng et al., 2023). The restrictions on physical gatherings and movements also forced many youth activists to adapt their critical actions, often shifting from offline to online platforms to continue their advocacy (Mathews et al., 2023). It will be, therefore, important for results to be replicated in post‐pandemic data to determine the impact (or lack thereof) of the pandemic on the associations between critical consciousness and negative mental health symptoms.

Our measure (the ShoCCS; Diemer et al., 2022) also precluded a detailed investigation of multiple different types of critical action. While our study did not examine how different types of action could impact mental health, actions can differ in content—such as interpersonal, communal, or political actions (Aldana et al., 2019) and in risk level (Hope et al., 2019). However, it remains unclear how different actions relate to mental health. Future research may benefit from incorporating measures such as the Anti‐racism Action Scale (Aldana et al., 2019) or adapted versions of the Black Community Activism Orientation Scale (BCAOS; Hope et al., 2019), which break down actions into interpersonal, communal, and political (ARAS), and low‐risk, high‐risk, and political actions (BCAOS).

Our measurement of mental health symptoms includes anxiety, depression, and stress, it is important to recognize that these indicators do not represent the full spectrum of well‐being. Well‐being includes both negative and positive states, each contributing uniquely to well‐being. Positive and negative states are not independent of each other; positive mental states are not merely the absence of negative symptoms but have distinct determinants and effects on health (Huppert & Whittington, 2003). For instance, individuals may experience high stress while also feeling a strong sense of purpose and satisfaction from their critical actions (Conner, Crawford, & Galioto, 2023). To better understand the impact of critical consciousness on well‐being, it would be essential to measure both positive and negative states. Future quantitative research should aim to explore well‐being as a whole, to examine how positive outcomes of critical consciousness may be maximized to enhance overall well‐being.

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

In conclusion, youth engagement in critical action is necessary to enact change at a societal level and may be associated with aspects of well‐being such as purpose in life and other desirable outcomes (e.g., Conner, Crawford, & Galioto, 2023), but our study indicates that action (but not reflection or motivation) may be costly in terms of one's negative mental health symptoms. By better understanding the psychological impact of critical consciousness on depression, anxiety, and psychological stress symptoms, the present findings can be used as an impetus to mobilize practitioners, community organizers, and researchers to better support the mental health of highly critically active youth. Future research should focus on understanding the longitudinal mechanisms linking action to negative mental health to better understand the impacts of youth of color's critical consciousness development and engagement in activism. Identifying and eventually disrupting these mechanisms, we can better maximize the benefits of activism among youth of color while protecting youth from potential negative side effects of critical consciousness on their mental health.

PATIENT CONSENT STATEMENT

Participants' first parents gave consent for their child to participate, followed by youth's assent.

Supporting information

Table S1.

Desmarais, A. , & Christophe, N. K. (2024). Discrimination, critical consciousness, and mental health in American youth of color. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 34, 1573–1583. 10.1111/jora.13026

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.