Psychiatric symptoms in offspring of within vs. across racial/ethnic marriages.

Abstract

A large number of adolescents of interracial ancestry (parents comprising various combinations of African-American, American Indian/Alaska Native, European-American, Chinese, Filipino, Hispanic, Japanese, Korean, Puerto Rican, Samoan, and Tongan ancestry) were contrasted with a monoracial European-American sample in the degree to which they reported symptoms of depression, anxiety, conduct disorder/aggression, and substance abuse. The adolescents of interracial ancestry were subdivided into three groups in terms of parental ancestry: both parents of interracial ancestry, one parent of interracial and the other of monoracial ancestry, and both parents of monoracial but different ancestries. The interracial ancestry groups did not differ significantly from one another or from the European American sample in terms of symptom scores.