This dissertation examines how collective stressful events are framed and the implications of these framings for mental health outcomes. Prior research has found that people often frame the same events differently and that the way in which they frame an event can shape their emotional responses to it. The research herein builds on the extant literature by testing this relationship in the context of collective stressful and traumatic events, extending theoretical models to include broader subjectivist conceptualizations and adopting a text-based approach to studying event framing. Study 1 assessed framing of and responses to a national political event, the 2018 Judge Brett Kavanaugh-Dr. Christine Blasey Ford Senate Judiciary hearings. Using qualitative and quantitative data from a U.S. national sample, analyses explored how people framed this event, whether there were partisan differences in framing, and whether partisan framings were differentially related to acute stress responses following the hearings. Results suggest that Democrats and Republicans did view this event differently and that Republicans and individuals who adopted a Republican framing were less distressed by the event. Study 2 assessed the longitudinal relationship between event framing and general and event-related emotional responses to a mass violence event, the Boston Marathon bombings (BMB). Data from a U.S national sample were analyzed to examine how people framed this event at its one-year anniversary and whether those framings predicted BMB-related posttraumatic stress symptoms, general distress, and violence- and terrorism-related worry one year later. Regression analyses revealed that redemption-focused framing of the BMB was associated with lower BMB-related posttraumatic stress responses and that framing that blamed legal actors was related to greater posttraumatic stress and worry about future violence and terrorism. Study 3 explored how people framed an ongoing, chronic stressful event, the COVID-19 pandemic, as it unfolded and how those framings related to mental health over time. Framings were assessed by examining individuals’ greatest pandemic-related worries in a national sample in the early days of the pandemic in the U.S. and linking them to responses over the next six months. Regression analyses revealed that several COVID-19-related worries were associated with concurrent and prospective mental health outcomes. Health-related framing was associated with greater COVID- 19-related acute stress and general distress within the first month of the pandemic, economic framing was related to greater general distress within the first month, and scarcity framing was linked to general distress approximately six months later. The benefits of using a subjectivist, text-based approach for advancing knowledge and theory across all three studies are discussed.

We conducted a three-year longitudinal study of the mental and physical health of a national probability sample following the September 11th terrorist attacks. Adjustment over the three years following the attacks was associated with higher levels of future-oriented thinking and lower levels of fear about future terrorism (as measured 1, 2, and 3 years post-9/11), even after adjusting for demographics, lifetime trauma, pre-9/11 mental and physical health, and 9/11-related exposure. Future orientation over the three years post-9/11 was associated with fewer pre-9/11 mental health problems, greater frequency of adulthood trauma, and using active coping strategies in response to the attacks. Fear of future terrorism was associated with greater frequency of adulthood trauma, more television watching immediately after the attacks, and using more planning and religion-based coping strategies immediately following the attacks. Thinking about the future can be a double-edged sword: Worrying about future terrorism may undermine well-being, whereas focusing on future goals may enhance it when coping with stressful events like the September 11th attacks.

Negative childhood experiences are associated with poor health and psychosocial outcomes throughout one’s lifespan. We examine associations between specific adverse childhood events, recent negative life events, and several adulthood outcomes: psychological distress, functional impairment, general worries about the future, and physician-diagnosed mental and physical health ailments. Data were gathered from multiple waves of an online survey initially administered to a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults between 4/29/13-5/13/13. Over the next two years, respondents (n = 2908) completed detailed measures of exposure to multiple negative childhood experiences as well as physician-diagnosed mental and physical health ailments; over time, respondents also completed measures assessing exposure to negative life events occurring in the past year. All analyses were weighted to adjust for attrition and sampling design. Overall, 24.86% (n = 723) of the sample reported bullying during childhood, 14.65% (n =426) reported physical abuse, 14.43% (n = 420) reported witnessing parental violence, 10.24% (n = 298) reported sexual abuse, and 7.94% (n = 231) indicated parental neglect. Respondents who reported experiencing childhood bullying, physical abuse, and sexual abuse reported greater distress, functional impairment, and worry about future negative events as mediated through recent negative life events compared to those who did not. Those who experienced bullying, neglect, and sexual abuse reported more mental health ailments compared to those who did not while those reporting bullying and sexual abuse reported more physical health ailments. Negative childhood experiences are linked to ongoing exposure to stressful events, which are associated with poorer outcomes in adulthood.

African Americans and Native Americans experience more psychological and behavioral health disparities when compared to European Americans. These disparities may be associated with disproportional exposures to stress and trauma due to the unique historical trauma these populations have suffered in the U.S. The intergenerational effects of stress and trauma on psychological and behavioral outcomes have been demonstrated in populations that have faced historical trauma (e.g., Holocaust survivors). The purpose of this systematic review was to examine the intergenerational effects of stress and trauma on the psychological and behavioral outcomes of African Americans and Native Americans in the U.S. PsycINFO, PubMed, CINAHL, Scopus, and Web of Science were searched for studies that met eligibility criteria. After duplicates were removed, 1,671 studies were screened, and seven studies were included in this review. Results provided some evidence for the adverse intergenerational effects of stress and trauma (e.g., adverse childhood experiences) on the psychological and behavioral outcomes (e.g., substance use) of African Americans and Native Americans in the U.S. Nonetheless, the findings of this review precluded robust conclusions about this relation due to the current lack of rigorous studies addressing this topic in the literature. This review demonstrated the need for a cohesive body of literature that rigorously examines the intergenerational effects of stress and trauma on the psychological and behavioral outcomes of African Americans and Native Americans in the U.S. from which to draw strong conclusions and generate recommendations.

The relationship between community organization proximity and post-disaster mental health following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings is examined in this dissertation. Participant data come from representative samples of Boston and New York metropolitan area residents (N = 1,787) assessed several times over a two-year period. Contextual data come from the U.S. Census and online organization archives (Google Places Application Program Interface or API and Guidestar). To date, no known study has explored the psychological benefits or costs of community organizations post-disaster.

Among Boston metropolitan area residents, living close to more safety-based organizations was associated with probable post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), functional impairment, and psychological distress. Among these residents, living near more health-based and child- and family-promoting organizations within a half to 1 mile area was associated with a lowered chance of having “probable PTSD” 6-7 months post-bombing and fewer fears and worries at the two year anniversary. For New York metropolitan area residents, educational organizations and health-based organizations appeared to have some buffering effects, though organization type concentration and proximity had less bearing overall on the psychological health of residents. Being directly exposed to the Boston Marathon bombings or having previously experienced at least one prior community trauma significantly moderated the relationship between organization concentration (i.e., child- and family-promoting organizations and voluntary community organizations) and short-term mental health outcomes. Specifically, among both subsamples, the presence of more organizations within a one mile area corresponded to lower acute stress scores and a decreased risk of being classified as having “probable PTSD” if the resident was directly exposed to the bombings or had a history of community trauma exposure. Also, for New York metropolitan area residents, more indirect media exposure was associated with a decreased risk for probable PTSD with more health-based and voluntary community organizations nearby. These findings suggest that organizations can often be helpful for disaster-exposed residents within or outside a disaster environment, but that select organizations (i.e., safety-based organizations) may be beneficial only at distance after a disaster.

Geographic methods were also used to identify high distress clusters or outlier points using mental health data collected only on Boston metropolitan area residents. Consistent with prior research, significant high distress clusters were found near the site of the bombings. This supports the continued dispersion of relief aid to disaster-exposed areas in the aftermath. Finally, an automated cleaning method incorporating text analysis software (Meaning Extraction Helper or MEH) was outlined using open-source, educational organization data returned from Google Places API (N = 10,626). Compared against the manually cleaned data, the automated organization data were found to be an 89% match. It is therefore recommended that future studies using organization data employ the automated cleaning method to efficiently filter out the “noise” inherent in big datasets.

Across a correlational study and two experiments, this dissertation examined the link between media exposure to interpersonal violence and mental health, as well as the role of social (racial) identity in this link. In Chapter 2, observational data from a nationally representative U.S. sample were used to investigate correlates of watching videos of Black victims of violence, the association between frequent watching and mental health outcomes, and whether race (Black vs. non-Black) moderated this association. Results showed that (a) Black participants watched videos of Black victims of violence more frequently than non-Black participants, (b) more frequent watching was associated with greater video-specific distress, global distress, and functional impairment, and (c) more frequent watching was prospectively associated with greater stress about police violence against Black people 18 months later for Black, but not non-Black, participants. In Chapter 3, two experiments were conducted to assess the psychological impact of exposure to images of interpersonal violence and the roles of victim race, violence type (i.e., police vs. non-police [civilian] perpetrator), perpetrator race, and the viewer’s own race in these responses. Results in Experiment 1 indicated that both Black and White individuals’ negative affect and image-related distress were increased by exposure to images of Black victims (vs. White victims) of violence. Also, those who were more distressed by the images in the experiment reported more worry about and perceived risk of future violence one week later. Findings in Experiment 2 showed that Black individuals’ emotional responses to images of Black victims of violence depended on whether the perpetrator was a police officer (vs. civilian) and the perpetrator’s race (Black vs. White). Taken together, the results of this dissertation suggest that media exposure to Black victims of violence is associated with adverse mental health outcomes, both in the shorter and longer term. Black viewers of this media may be especially susceptible to these worse outcomes, likely due to sharing a social (racial) identity with the victims in the incidents. The implications of these findings for both individuals and media organizations are discussed.

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