Stop AAPI Hate Mental Health Report
5/27/21 – Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are experiencing unprecedented and growing health inequity issues brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and anti-AAPI hate. While racism targeting Asian Americans is not new in U.S. history with exclusionary immigration policies that systemically barred immigration from Asia until 1965, the antagonistic U.S.-China relations and inflammatory political rhetoric about the virus (e.g., “China virus”) exacerbated racism against Asian Americans. This report features the findings from three research projects that investigated the effects of anti-Asian racism on mental health among Asian Americans during the pandemic: (1) Stop AAPI Hate Follow-Up Survey (Saw et al.), (2) National Anti-Asian American Racism Study (Liu et al.), and (3) COVID-19 Adult Resilience Experiences Study (Hahm et al.).
Overall Key Findings
- Asian Americans who have experienced racism are more stressed by anti-Asian hate than the pandemic itself (Saw et al.).
- One in five Asian Americans who have experienced racism display racial trauma, the psychological and emotional harm caused by racism (Saw et al.).
- After reporting, Asian Americans who have experienced racism have lower race-based traumatic stress (Saw et al.).
- Asian Americans who have experienced racism have heightened symptoms of depression, anxiety, stress, and physical symptoms (Liu et al.).
Experience of racism during COVID-19 is found to be more strongly associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms (Hahm et al.).
Click here to read the full report (PDF).
