The daily cost of constant watchfulness

Despite well-established evidence linking racial discrimination and internalizing problems, little is known about the culturally specific mechanisms that underlie this association, particularly in adolescence or within a longitudinal framework. To address this gap, the present study utilized an intensive daily diary design to examine the extent to which racism-related vigilance mediates the association between racial discrimination and internalizing problems among ethnoracially minoritized adolescents. A nationally representative sample of 324 ethnoracially minoritized adolescents was recruited through a research survey panel (51.9% male; 43.8% Black, 18.5% Latino/a/x/e, 12.7% Asian; M age = 15.71 years, SD age = 1.95). In Spring 2024, participants completed daily surveys across 15 days assessing racial discrimination exposure, racism-related vigilance, depression symptoms, and anxiety symptoms. Results indicated that after accounting for demographics and previous-day depression, previous-day racial discrimination predicted increased next-day depressive symptoms via heightened racism-related vigilance ( b = 0.022, SE = 0.008, p = .005). The same pattern of findings emerged when the model was recomputed with anxiety as the outcome ( b = 0.027, SE = 0.009, p = .003). This study is among the first to demonstrate that racism-related vigilance is a key developmental process linking racial discrimination to elevated depression and anxiety among ethnoracially minoritized youth at the daily level. Results underscore the need for prevention efforts that help youth balance the adaptive role of heightened vigilance amid ongoing racism exposure with the cultivation of a larger repertoire of skills necessary for meeting the broader developmental demands of adolescence, including navigating situations that do not involve racial threat. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)

Anxiety · Coping (psychology · Longitudinal study · Mental health · Poison control · PsycINFO · Racism · Vigilance (psychology · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development · Critical Race Theory in Education · Racial and Ethnic Identity Research