Undergraduate Research & Scholarships

Lea Mira Raha Social Science

Embodied Trauma: Investigating the Relationship Between Lifecourse Racial Discrimination and Mental Health among South Asian Adults in the United States

Scholars Journal

Only recently have researchers in the US begun to examine race-related stressors that pose a persistent threat in the lives of people of color. Little research investigates how lifecourse discrimination adversely affects the health of South Asian people in the US, despite the growing size of their communities in the US and the well-documented increased cardiovascular disease and mental health risk of this population. The long-term impacts of racial discrimination may stem from complex interactions between xenophobia, colorism, biological vestiges from colonization, and caste discrimination, among others, faced by South Asians in the US. Lea’s research seeks to disentangle these relationships, identify sources and pathways of racial discrimination and trauma across the lifecourse, and elucidate subsequent adverse health consequences using qualitative interviews and quantitative survey assessments and blood pressure measurements.