The health cost of upward mobility:

"So the kids who followed the demographically normative path tend to be the healthiest, even considering that relative poverty and lack of education are health risk factors. The message could be to never be an outlier, but that’s no message."

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/the-health-cost-of-upward-mobility/398486/?fb_ref=Default

The high prevalence of poor sleep among African-American executives, the researchers wrote last year in The New York Times, “can be attributed partly to limited professional and social networks that can provide financial and emotional support; discrimination or microaggressions experienced in the workplace; hypervigilance because of a perceived high work ethic needed to succeed; or greater levels of neighborhood and home stress.”

Part of what may be going on is when you get to a competitive environment like college, and thereafter competition only becomes more fierce, these kids double down on their tendency to overcome—to be focused and persistent. And they do that to the exclusion of social lives, physical activity, eating well. They become so focused on this definition of success that they just neglect some of the lifestyles that happen naturally for the kids who are having an easier time.

In addition to discrimination and alienation, having to manage competing demands of a professional life and a “family-of-origin” life where expectations and norms are dramatically different. Add systemic discrimination on top of alienation from both one’s root-community and from other high-achievers, and the stress is compounded immeasurably.