Discrimination should be assessed within this larger social context of the multiple stressful exposures within which it is embedded. Research is needed to elucidate, in careful longitudinal analyses, how perceived discrimination relates to other types of stressors and combines with them to produce patterns of cumulative exposure to multiple adversities that can adversely affect health status. The processes may be complex. Experiences of discrimination such as the loss of one’s job can easily lead to “stress proliferation processes” in which the primary stressor of unemployment can give rise to multiple other types of secondary stressors, such as financial strain and family conflict (Pearlin et al. 2005). Traumas are among the most potent types of stressful experiences that can trigger stress proliferation with the secondary stressors that are triggered by traumas contributing more to later health than the primary trauma itself (Pearlin et al. 2005).
