Today’s episode is on How Does Racism Affect Health? So this episodes delves into social psychology as we deal with discrimination and prejudice and psychology addresses these topics well.
However, we will be dipping into biological psychology as well because we address biology and physiological responses that people have to certain stimuli.
I’m doing this topic as the episode of The Psychology World Podcast today because I want to show that racism DOES have a real physical impact upon the people who face it. In addition, to the profound amount of other effects that racism has on people and their lives.
Firstly, and this is the main way how racism impacts a person’s health, is racism triggers the stress response in a person because they are in a potentially harmful situation. Therefore, there bodily acts accordingly by increasing heart rate, breathing as well as blood pressure. The body does this to get more oxygen around the body and to the muscles so the body can react if it needs to.
In the short term, this is a good thing because it means that the victim of racism can fight or run away if needed.
However, if this is frequently activated so the if the body is constantly increasing its heart rate and breath as well as blood pressure then this can lead to many health problems. Such as: depression, anxiety, insomnia and other problems.
Additionally, a massive problem with racism as well as prejudice is that if a person is regularly exposed to it then it leads to their self-esteem and self-worth to be eroded. Leading to other problems such as: lack of self-esteem, depression, anxiety and in extreme cases, but this probably happens a lot more than we think, self-harm and suicide.
Consequently, I hope that in this episode of The Psychology World Podcast I have shown you that racism has a very real and awful impact on people.
Therefore, if we ever encounter racism and have racist thoughts then please challenge it as these thoughts are not needed and it is only if we work together can we survive and make our societies a better place for ourselves, our children and for the future generations.
Overall, I hope that you have liked this social psychology blog post and if you want to learn more about racism, prejudice and other topics in social psychology then please check out Sociocultural Psychology 2nd Edition and if you want to learn more other depression and anxiety then please check Abnormal Psychology 2nd Edition.
Have a great day,
Connor.
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