Lillian Polanco-Roman

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Assistant) at New School

Objective: The present study examined the role of racism-based traumatic stress (RBTS) symptoms (i.e., traumatic stress reactions in direct response to experiences of racial discrimination) and suicide-related risk in a national sample of U.S. Black and Latine adolescents. Method: Study participants were recruited from an online survey panel (N = 5...

Over the past decade, mental health problems have disproportionately increased among U.S. ethnoracially minoritized college students, though explanations for this disparity remain understudied. In the present study, we examined the direct and indirect associations between online racial/ethnic discrimination, suicidal ideation (SI), and alcohol misu...

Objective: The study aimed to identify distinct profiles of online racial discrimination (ORD) and exposure to race-related traumatic events online (TEO) among Black and Latine youth, explore if these profiles would be related to posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), and examine how racial identity (RI) beliefs may mitigate the impact of these expe...

Introduction Compared to their exclusively gay/lesbian or heterosexual identifying peers, young people identifying as bisexual+ (e.g. bisexual, pansexual, asexual, queer or questioning) are at elevated risk for suicidal ideation (SI) and attempts (SA). The present study aimed to establish whether the prevalence of, and psychosocial risk factors for...

Although scholars have increasingly drawn attention to the potentially traumatic nature of racial/ethnic discrimination, diagnostic systems continue to omit these exposures from trauma definitions. This study contributes to this discussion by examining the co-occurrence of conventional forms of potentially traumatic experiences (PTEs) with in-perso...

Objective: Studies demonstrating associations between experiences of racism and traumatic stress symptoms have predominantly been conducted in adults, due in large part to the lack of available tools for assessing racism-based traumatic stress symptoms (RBTSS) in youth. The current study sought to address this gap by developing and validating the f...

Objectives: Reliable and valid tools assessing online racism exposures in youth of color are needed. The present study examined the validity, internal consistency, and measurement invariance of the modified individual and vicarious Online Racial Discrimination (ORD) subscales from the Online Victimization Scale (OVS; Tynes et al., 2010). Method: Us...

Introduction Parental suicide attempts and suicide death increase suicide risk in their offspring. High levels of impulsivity have been observed in families at high risk for suicide. Impulsivity, a highly heritable trait that is especially elevated in childhood, is frequently measured with the UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale, which includes negativ...

Objective: Despite growing attention to the intergenerational effects of trauma, including racial trauma, within Black communities, little empirical evidence exists. This qualitative study explored intergenerational trauma and storytelling within Black families in the United States, with two key aims: (1) explore if and how family members talk abou...

Acculturation has a central role in the theorization and research on Latina teens suicide attempts. In this article, we report on a systematic review on the literature to describe and assess what has been thought and studied about the role of acculturation, and related phenomena on the suicidal behaviors of Latina adolescents. Methods. We conducted...

Black and Latinx caregivers face high risk for parenting stress and racism-related stress due to experiences of racial discrimination (RD). This study aimed to explore the associations between RD, parenting stress, and psychological distress in caregiver-child dyads, as well as the impact of a mentalizing-focused group intervention on caregivers’ e...

Sexual and gender minority (SGM) populations have substantially higher rates of most psychopathologies. Several theoretical models have been proposed, attributing the disparities to either (a) additional stressors related to their minoritized status (i.e., minority stress) or (b) that stressors interact with a pre-existing vulnerability. A parallel...

Objectives: The legacy of slavery renders Black individuals vulnerable to the harmful effects of historical trauma which may interact with contemporary racism-related experiences to increase substance use. We examined the associations between historical and contemporary racism-related experiences (i.e., historical loss thinking, major racial discri...

Objective: Despite growing evidence demonstrating the association between racial and ethnic discrimination and traumatic stress symptoms in adult populations, the research among youth remains sparse. Drawing upon race-based traumatic stress models, and following the PRISMA-2020 guidelines, this systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to identify...

Racism has been declared a public health threat. With increased direct and vicarious exposure to racism-based violence through social media, we explored the associations between racism-based events and traumatic stress symptomatology, as well as self- and collective care (inclusive of coping, activism, and ethnic and racial identity) through a mixe...

Purpose Among Asian-American/Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latinx, and Black youth, the US born have higher risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors (attempts and death-by-suicide) than first-generation migrants. Research has focused on the role of acculturation, defined as the sociocultural and psychological adaptations from navigating multiple cultur...

The significance of youth suicide as a public health concern is underscored by the fact that it is the second-leading cause of death for youth globally. While suicide rates for White groups have declined, there has been a precipitous rise in suicide deaths and suicide-related phenomena in Black youth; rates remain high among Native American/Indigen...

In the United States, suicide deaths have disproportionately increased among Black and Hispanic youth over the past 2 decades.1 Despite the critical need for more culturally responsive suicide prevention strategies, there has been only sparse research into unique risk factors commonly experienced among ethnoracially minoritized youth, such as racis...

Rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviors have disproportionately increased among ethnoracially minoritized college students. Despite growing evidence suggesting racial/ethnic discrimination may confer suicide-related risk, less is known about mechanisms underlying this relation. The present study aimed to clarify the potential role of anxiety in th...

Introduction and aims Despite growing evidence demonstrating the negative mental health effects of racism-related experiences, racial/ethnic discrimination is seldom examined in youth suicide risk. The present study tested the association between racial/ethnic discrimination and well-supported correlates of suicide-related risk including emotion re...

Suicide rates among ethnoracially minoritized youth (i.e., youth of color) peak before the age of 30, and striking disparities in access to mental health services have been identified in this age group. However, suicide prevention strategies have yet to fully address structural racism as a mechanism in producing disparities in risk, protective fact...

Objective: Recent trends in suicide and suicide-related risk suggest that African American youth are particularly vulnerable; however, little is known about the sociocultural context of suicide-related risk in this population. The present study examined ethnic identity as a moderator of the relationship between defeat and entrapment and suicide ide...

The US is home to the world’s largest immigrant population, with an estimated 51 million foreign-born migrants, who largely originate from the global south. A significant proportion of the US population thus experiences acculturation or psychological changes as they navigate between different cultural environments. Contemporary conceptualizations o...

Parental and family suicidal behaviors and parental psychopathology have been linked with youth suicide-related risk. This chapter presents the current knowledge for offspring suicidal ideation and behaviors in the presence of parental and family suicidal behaviors and psychopathology. In particular, research focused on parental and family suicide...

The fields of psychiatry and psychology have not sufficiently attended to the detrimental and pervasive effects of racism and racial discrimination on the mental health of historically and currently marginalized racial and ethnic minority populations. Over the past 3 decades, Williams and Cooper¹ and others have reported how structural racism and t...

Objective: Drawing on race-based trauma models, the present study examined common reactions to trauma exposure (i.e., stress sensitivity, dissociative symptoms, depressive symptoms), as potential explanatory factors in the relation between racial/ethnic discrimination and suicide-related risk among racial and ethnic minority young adults. Method: A...

Importance: Racial/ethnic and sex disparities in suicide ideation and attempts are well established, with higher risk of suicide ideation and attempt among US racial/ethnic minority school-aged youths (than their White peers) and girls and women (than boys and men). The suicide-related risk of racial/ethnic minority young adults, especially young...

In the United States, suicide risk for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) is most concentrated before age 30, which contrasts with non‐Hispanic White groups, for whom the highest risk period is during ages 50–65. The need for a better understanding of the underlying causes of suicidal behavior among BIPOC youth is critical. Cultural con...

Theories suggest that adolescents exposed to suicide attempts and/or deaths are at higher risk of attempting suicide, themselves. However, research findings have been mixed, with most studies not accounting for psychiatric vulnerability. We examined past psychiatric diagnosis as a moderator of the association between lifetime exposure to suicide at...

Note: This semi-structured Adolescent Suicide Ideation Interview is designed to obtain the details about adolescents' recent suicide ideation, including precipitants, content, and form of the suicide ideation, whether followed or not followed by a suicide attempt. The interview was developed via pilot research involving interviews of adolescents pr...

This chapter examines suicide-related risk among Latin American migrants worldwide, exploring the finding of elevated risk among certain subgroups of LAC migrants against a background of lower risk overall compared to native populations. The evidence summarized here supports the role of acculturation in rising suicide-related risk, with longer expo...

Objective: The relationship between emotion expressivity and psychological symptoms varies by race/ethnicity, and reduced expression of emotions has been implicated in risk for suicidal ideation. The present study examined differences in the relation between emotion expressivity and suicidal ideation through well-documented correlates of suicide ri...

Purpose of Review Identifying risk factors for STBs during adolescence is essential for suicide prevention. In this review, we employ the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework to synthesize studies on key neurocognitive processes—cognitive control, reward responsiveness/valuation, and negative urgency—relevant to adolescent STBs. Recent Findin...

Drawing from Race-Based Traumatic Stress theory, the present study examined whether traumatic stress and depressive symptoms differentially help explain the relation between racial/ethnic discrimination and suicidal ideation across gender and racial/ethnic groups. A racially/ethnically diverse group of emerging adults (N = 1344; Mage = 19.88, SD =...

Objectives: Examine the impact of parent-adolescent acculturation gap on vulnerability to suicidal ideation among adolescents presenting to an emergency department with suicidal behavior. Methods: Multiethnic sample of adolescents (n = 43) and their parents (n = 43) completed an acculturation measure, and adolescents reported on emotion reactivi...

Objective: Emotion reactivity and difficulties in expressing emotions have been implicated in risk for suicidal behavior. This study examined comfort in expressing emotions (positive vs. negative) and depressive symptoms as mediators of the prospective relation between emotion reactivity and suicidal ideation. Design: Emerging adults (N = 143; 7...

Background and objectives: Repetitive thinking about the future has been suggested as one way in which individuals may become hopeless about the future. We report on a new scale assessing future-oriented repetitive thinking, termed the Future-Oriented Repetitive Thought (FoRT) Scale. Methods: In Study 1, an exploratory factor analysis was conduc...

There is a growing body of literature suggesting that reactions to stressful life events, such as intrusive thoughts, physiological hyperarousal, and cognitive/behavioral avoidance (i.e., stress-related symptoms) may increase risk for thinking about and attempting suicide. Cognitive vulnerability models have identified rumination (i.e., perseverati...

Poster presented at the AACAP conference in October 2016

Objective: The race-based traumatic stress theory (Carter, 2007) suggests that some racial- and ethnic-minority individuals experience racial discrimination as psychological trauma, as it may elicit a response comparable to posttraumatic stress. In the present study, we examined this further by determining the relation between racial discriminatio...

Objective: This study examined mental health treatment barriers following intake at a counseling center among racially/ethnically diverse college students. Methods: College students (N = 122) seen for intake at a college counseling center in 2012-2013 completed self-reports of depressive symptoms, suicidal ideation, and mental health treatment b...

Objectives. The present study examined the relation between cognitive response styles (i.e., brooding rumination, reflective rumination, distraction) and cognitive inflexibility in differentially predicting history of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) only, suicide attempt (SA) only, or both (NSSI+SA). Methods. College students (N = 352) completed se...

Abstract The present study sought to determine whether dissociative experiences mediated the relationship between traumatic life events and attenuated positive psychotic symptoms in a non-treatment-seeking sample of racial and ethnic minority young adults. Participants (n=549) completed a self-report inventory for psychosis risk (i.e., prodromal qu...

Among emerging adults and college students, racial and ethnic minorities experience greater risk for suicidal ideation and behavior than their White counterparts. Research has identified numerous cognitive risk factors for suicidal ideation. However, they have not been well studied among racial and ethnic minorities. The present study examined the...

Perceived discrimination has been found to increase risk for depression in emerging adulthood, but explanatory cognitive mechanisms have not been well studied. We examined whether the brooding and reflective subtypes of rumination would mediate the relation between perceived discrimination and depressive symptoms among racial/ethnic minority, versu...

Culturally related experiences are seldom considered in assessing risk for suicidal behavior among emerging adults, despite racial/ethnic differences in suicide attempts. The present study examined the impact of culturally related stressors on hopelessness, symptoms of depression, and suicidal ideation-well-known predictors of suicidal behavior-amo...

Cultural factors are often neglected in studies of suicidal behavior among emerging adults. The present study examined acculturative stress and perceived discrimination as statistical predictors of a suicide attempt history among an ethnically diverse sample of 969 emerging adults, ages 18-25 (M = 18.8). Females made up 68% of the sample, and the r...