Racial Trauma and Black Mothers’ Mental Health: Does Cognitive Flexibility Buffer the Effects of Racialized Stress?

Racialized stress disproportionately impacts Black individuals and confers increased risk for psychological distress and executive dysfunction. However, there is little evidence on psychological distress’ association with cognitive flexibility (CF), an executive function theorized to be a neurocognitive resilience factor, as it is shown to reflect the ability to adapt thoughts/behaviors to changing environmental stimuli. As such, we aimed to examine the relation between racialized stress and psychological distress and the potential buffering effects of CF. Data were drawn from The Family Life Project and included 372 Black mothers from rural households experiencing poverty. Mothers completed a battery of questionnaires to assess sociodemographics, experiences with racialized stress (RRSE), psychological distress (CES-D), and their cognitive flexibility (WCST-64). Results evidenced a significant association between psychological distress and racialized stress, such that mothers who reported higher racialized stress reported higher psychological distress; this relation remained significant after controlling for a host of sociodemographic risk factors. CF did not emerge as a significant moderator of the relation between psychological distress and racialized stress. Findings highlight the potential deleterious effects of racialized stress on psychological distress. There may be unique facets of racialized stress that differentially impact the risk for psychological distress, and CF potentially buffers this relation. Further investigations are needed to understand the underlying mechanisms that may confer resilience to psychological distress amongst Black mothers.