ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Mental Health and Wellbeing in Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1614475
Culture, Campus, and Confidence: Unpacking Discrimination's Impact on Mental Health Among Diverse College Students
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of California, Riverside, Riverside, United States
- 2University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Objective: This study examined the associations between discrimination, social anxiety, and self-esteem among racially and ethnically minoritized college students. Additionally, we explored how ethnic-racial identity affirmation, family ethnic socialization, and school ethnicracial composition influenced these relationships. Method: The sample consisted of 3,257 Black, Latinx, and Asian American college students (Mage = 19.94) from 30 universities in the United States who participated in an online multi-university study. Results: Findings revealed that discrimination was associated with increased social anxiety but not self-esteem. We also discovered that school ethnic-racial composition played a role in the relationship between discrimination and self-esteem when diversity was both high and low. Conclusion: These findings highlight the importance of understanding the role of school diversity in students' mental health and provide valuable insight for school personnel and policy makers who are dedicated to promoting more supportive school environments.
Keywords: Discrimination, social anxiety, self-esteem, Ethnic-racial identity, school ethnic-racial composition Culture, campus, and Confidence: Unpacking Discrimination's Impact on Mental Health
Received: 18 Apr 2025; Accepted: 15 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Williams, Mullins, Israel, Bravo and Loyd. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: LeNisha Williams, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.