Anxiety symptoms in African-American and Caucasian youth: Relations to negative life events, social support, and coping

The purpose of the present study was to determine the relations among negative life events, social support, coping and anxiety symptoms in 709 Caucasian and African-American youth between 11 and 14 years of age. Results indicated that more negative life events, less social support, more coping efforts, and African-American status were related to more anxiety symptoms. Additionally, although active coping moderated the relationship between negative life events and anxiety, these relations were qualified in separate analyses for the African-American and Caucasian youth. Negative life events were related to anxiety symptoms only for the African-American participants. When these findings were explored further for males and females of each racial group, negative life events remained significant for African-American males but not African-American females. Implications of these findings are examined and future directions for research to understand the processes underlying these relations with both Caucasian and African-American youth are addressed.

► We investigated the relation of risk and protective factors to adolescent anxiety.
► Additionally, we examined two models using social support and coping as moderators.
► We found that negative, life events, social support and coping predicted anxiety.
► Negative life events was significant predictor only for African American males.
► Moderation model for coping was significant for the African American adolescents.