Majority of Americans Stressed About Nation's Future, Discrimination

Comparing the period of May 21 to 26, 2020, and May 28 to June 2, 2020, the rate of black Americans who said they have experienced symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorders increased from 36 to 41 percent, and the rate among Asian Americans increased from 28 to 34 percent. Among non-Hispanic white respondents in the same time period, the reported increase was smaller, from 32 to 33 percent. The rate among Hispanic Americans dipped from 42 to 38 percent.

"The reason for any increase or decrease cannot be definitively attributed to any one cause on the basis of the survey data. But it is certain that the survey will capture the mental health impact (if any) of events other than the coronavirus pandemic specifically,” says Stephen Blumberg, director of the National Center for Health Statistics’ Division of Health Interview Statistics, which collaborated with the Census Bureau on the survey.

"No potential source of such anxiety or depression is mentioned,” Blumberg says of the survey's mental health questions, which ask participants about symptoms of anxiety or depression experienced in the previous seven days. “Increases over time in reported frequency of such feelings could be due to the pandemic, and such increases could also be due to other national events, family matters, personal hardships or heartbreaks, or many other situations that can lead to emotional responses."

Taken broadly, experts say that the Census Bureau findings help illuminate preexisting disparities when it comes to mental health among racial and ethnic minorities, as well as the ongoing psychological toll of the coronavirus pandemic.

"Even before the (death) of George Floyd, there was a whole confluence of factors that would be expected to have bigger mental health impacts on racial minorities,” says Karestan Koenen, a professor of psychiatric epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who specializes in trauma and PTSD.

"All the mental health effects we talk about when we talk about the pandemic, we would expect to see even worse effects in communities that are more impacted [by COVID-19], which are communities of color or under-resourced communities,” she says.