The role of racial discrimination in the relationships between neighborhood ethnic density, depression, and anxiety symptoms among Black, Asian, and Latine urban college students.

Neighborhood social factors have increasingly been found relevant for the mental health of ethnoracial minoritized young people. This study examined neighborhood ethnic density, the racial or ethnic composition of one's neighborhood, in relation to anxiety and depression and whether racial discrimination mediated these relations among specific ethnoracial minoritized groups in the United States. Participants were 1,019 ethnoracial minoritized undergraduate students at a large urban public university who completed self-report surveys and provided their zip codes. Perceived and zip code-level neighborhood ethnic density was attained both before and after age 12, given evidence that neighborhood ethnic density during childhood may be more relevant to mental health outcomes. Generalized estimating equations were computed, accounting for zip code clustering and deprivation. Discrimination mediated the relationship between zip code-level ethnic density and depression in the Latine sample and mediated the relationship between perceived ethnic density and depression in the Black and Latine samples. Perceived ethnic density had direct effects on depression and anxiety in the Asian sample. Notably, discordant minority density (residing in a neighborhood where a different racial minority group predominates) was associated with greater depressive symptoms for Black and Latine individuals and greater anxiety for Asian individuals. Findings suggest distal neighborhood cultural factors may influence mental health outcomes among minoritized young people in nuanced ways for specific ethnoracial groups, in part because of exposure to racial discrimination in these sociocultural contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).