Monitor on Psychology - September 2011 - (Page 73)

W hen USA Today highlighted research by psychologist Mona M. Amer, PhD, in an article about the mental health of Muslim and Arab Americans’ mental health in 2006, the publicity didn’t just bring kudos from her colleagues. It also prompted death threats from strangers. “I received all these emails from people who were very upset because the story was a little sympathetic toward Muslims and Arabs,” says Amer, now an assistant professor of psychology at the American University of Cairo. “I saw articles online where people were saying if they are depressed, that means they’re crazy and shouldn’t even be living in this country.” The rhetoric hasn’t softened since then, thanks to antiMuslim campaign messages from political candidates, hearings on Muslim radicalization on Capitol Hill and the controversy over a proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero. According to the Pew Research Center, the number of Americans with favorable views of Islam dropped from 41 percent in 2005 to 30 percent in 2010. Now Amer and other researchers are examining the impact 9/11 and its aftermath have had on Muslim Americans’ wellbeing. What they’ve found is anxiety, depression and even posttraumatic stress disorder among a population some call doubly traumatized — first by the attacks themselves and then by the finger-pointing that followed. But they’ve also found effective coping and resilience, especially among young Muslim Americans. The psychological impact Determining 9/11’s impact on Muslims in the United States is difficult, says Amer, because there’s no baseline. “Prior to 9/11, there was virtually nothing published that related to the mental health of Muslims in the United States,” says Amer, former editor in chief of the Journal of Muslim Mental Health. “After that, there has been a handful of studies.” Most, she adds, aren’t based on empirical evidence. Amer’s own work, which she believes includes the largest and most demographically diverse look at Arab-American mental health, attempts to address that problem. The news isn’t good, she says. In a paper forthcoming in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, for example, Amer and psychologist Joseph D. Hovey, PhD, of the University of Toledo examined anxiety and depression rates among more than 600 adult Arab-Americans in 35 states. The majority of the study participants were Muslims. Half the study participants had depression serious enough to warrant further assessment, they found. A quarter reported moderate to severe anxiety. Those rates are higher than those of the general public and other minority groups, says Amer, citing ongoing racial profiling, discrimination and other stressors unique to Arabs as causes. The results should be interpreted with caution, say the authors, noting that the use of English and an Internet-based methodology may have skewed the sample toward younger, better educated and more affluent participants. But the results are especially striking given Arab-Americans’ reluctance to admit mental health problems, says Amer. About half of the participants were American-born and didn’t face the added stress of immigration, she points out. And Arab-Americans tend to have higher education and income than other Americans, which serve as protective factors. “There are things that are said in the media about Arabs and Muslims that would never be tolerated or said about any other group,” says Amer. “You receive constant messages about how your community is full of terrorists, ignorant people, oppressive people.” Arab-Americans in New York City are especially vulnerable, says Wahiba Abu-Ras, PhD, an assistant professor at Adelphi University’s School of Social Work. “Arab-Americans were traumatized three-fold,” says AbuRas, citing the devastation of the attack itself, the backlash from individuals and new government policies targeting this population, such as the Patriot Act. That trauma only added to people’s existing trauma, says Abu-Ras. “Many people come from conflicted areas, like Iraq and Palestine,” she says. And immigration itself can be traumatic. In a 2008 study published in the Journal of Muslim Mental Health (Vol. 3, No. 2), Abu-Ras and a co-author conducted focus groups with a small, nonrandom sample drawn from a community in Brooklyn to assess 9/11’s impact on Arab New Yorkers. Participants — all but four of them Muslim — revealed fear of hate crimes and threats to their safety, anxiety about the future, isolation and loss of community and stigmatization. Those fears were justified, says Abu-Ras. In a 2009 study of 102 New York Muslims published in Traumatology (Vol. 15, No. 3), she and a co-author found that hate-fueled incidents were common. Twenty-five percent of participants reported verbal assaults, 22 percent reported workplace discrimination, 19 percent reported unprovoked interrogation by government agents and 19 percent reported physical assaults. As a result, participants’ sense of safety declined dramatically, the researchers found. While the vast majority of study participants reported feeling safe or extremely safe before 9/11, afterward more than 82 percent felt unsafe to extremely unsafe in the United States. And while the small sample size means the findings can’t be generalized, the authors note, the study found that feeling less safe was a predictor of post-traumatic stress disorder. Coping methods The coping methods Muslim Americans choose play a crucial role in how well they handle ongoing discrimination and 73 septeMber 2011 • Monitor on psychology

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Monitor on Psychology - September 2011

Monitor on Psychology - September 2011
Letters
President’s Column
Contents
From the CEO
Supreme Court hears psychologists on prison and video game cases
Antipsychotics are overprescribed in nursing homes
New MCAT likely to recognize the mind-body connection
A $2 million boost for military and families
In Brief
GOVERNMENT RELATIONS UPDATE
On Your Behalf
Judicial Notebook
Random Sample
TIME CAPSULE
QUESTIONNAIRE
Speaking of Education
SCIENCE WATCH
An uncertain future for American workers
Advocating for psychotherapy
PRACTICE PROFILE
ETHICALLY SPEAKING
Seared in our memories
Helping kids cope in an uncertain world
APA and Nickelodeon team up
Muslims in America, post 9/11
Bin Laden’s death
‘They expect us to be there’
Answering the call of public policy
Candidates answer final questions
APA News
Division Spotlight
New leaders
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL FOUNDATION
Disaster relief training
Honoring teaching excellence
Personalities

Monitor on Psychology - September 2011