Kathawalla, Ummul-Kiram2024-06-052024-06-052021-08https://hdl.handle.net/11299/263692august University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. August 2021. Major: Psychology. Advisor: Moin Syed. 1 computer file (PDF); x, 161 pages.Research suggests that experiences of discrimination and life stressors are associated with negative mental-health outcomes for marginalized populations. Studies focusing on Muslim populations in western countries have found varied associations between negative mental-health outcomes and Islamophobia, anti-Muslim prejudice, and discrimination. We use meta-analytic methods to examine two predictors of mental health, thereby contributing to the debate on the impact of discrimination vs. life stressors on the development of mental-health outcomes. These meta-analyses include 295 correlations from 130 unique samples and 27,725 individuals, thus synthesizing the associations of both (a) perceived discrimination and mental health, and (b) life stressors and mental health for Muslims living in western countries. Discrimination was significantly associated with negative mental-health outcomes with an omnibus effect-size estimate between r = .22–.23. Discrimination was most strongly associated with depression (r = .30). We show that both perceived individual discrimination and group discrimination were significantly associated with worse mental-health outcomes, and the association was stronger for experiences of individual discrimination. We found that the association between discrimination and mental-health outcomes was consistent across ethnicity and continent. Some between-study variability for the discrimination dataset was explained by discrimination level, mental-health outcome direction, number of discrimination measure items, and refugee status. Life stressors were significantly associated with negative mental-health outcomes with an omnibus effect-size estimate between r = .32–.37. Life stressors were most strongly related to somatization (r = .41) and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD (r = .36). Some between-study variability for the life stressors dataset was explained by publication bias, sample population, number of life stressor measure items, continent, and ethnicity. Both omnibus effect-size estimates were robust to publication bias, outliers, and within-study dependence. We also conducted a qualitative review of identity moderators and suggest future directions. It is important to note that we synthesized the unique associations of discrimination and life stressors on mental health, showing that both are important and distinct predictors of Muslim mental health. In the current sociopolitical climate, this study is an important step to better serve the mental health needs of the growing global Muslim community.enThesis or Dissertation