Social Support and Perceived Mental Health by Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Socio-Economic Status: Is Social Support More Salient for African American Well-Being Compared with White Americans?

In this paper, we examine race/ethnicity differences in the association between perceived mental health and social support. Although it is relatively wellestablished that African Americans tend to have lower rates of depression than White Americans, the reasons for the lower vulnerability of African Americans is less well-understood. One possible explanation suggested by the ethnographic literature is the quantity and quality of social support available to African Americans (Stack, 1974). Yet little quantitative research has examined whether or not this accounts for the race/ethnicity difference in depression. We measure a comprehensive range of sources of social support including social support from family, friends, church networks, and partners, and the number of fictive kin. We use internal moderation coding to distinguish between the effect of occupying a role from the association between mental health and the quality of perceived social support. We also examine how gender and socio-economic status - measured as household income - moderate these associations. Using data from the National Survey of American Life (NSAL) on over 3,000 African Americans and 890 White Americans, we find that social support from friends, church members, and partners is associated with better perceived mental health, irrespective of race/ethnicity although partner support is more salient for White American's. Contrary to expectations, number of fictive kin is associated with well-being among White Americans, but not among African Americans. Our results indicate that family support is associated with better mental health among White Americans irrespective of household income and among Black Americans in average and particularly in high income households. However, among low-income African Americans, high family support is associated with poorer perceived mental health. We discuss the implications these results have for considerations of the study of how structural position - race/ethnicity, socio-economic status, and gender - influence the relationship between social support and mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]