Racism linked to drinking problems in Asian American students, new study shows

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Racism linked to drinking problems in Asian American students, new study shows

Racial discrimination may be causing alcohol-related problems among Asian American college students, according to a new research published in the Asian American Journal of Psychology.

The study, which was conducted before the pandemic, surveyed more than 1,400 U.S.-born Asian students at a large Southern California public university with a predominantly Asian student body, and found that a majority of the participants reported experiencing racism and drinking to cope with their elevated levels of psychological distress. (The university was not named in the study.)

“Asian American young adults are just generally overlooked in addiction science literature,” Derek Iwamoto, the lead author and an associate professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, told NBC Asian America. “We wanted to identify high-risk groups among Asian Americans.”

The new study uses what is known as the everyday racial discrimination metric to measure students’ experience with racial discrimination (“being treated with less courtesy than others; receiving poorer service than others in restaurants or stores; people acting as if you are not smart”), and the Kessler psychological distress scale to assess the anxiety and depressive symptoms such treatment occasions. The Rutgers alcohol problems index is used to measure alcohol-related problems.

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