Can addressing PTSD in black communities and law enforcement start the healing?

It is estimated that a third of active duty law enforcement have PTSD and Black Americans suffer from raced based trauma in large numbers. Can addressing PTSD in both groups in combination with de-escalation training be the answer?

Think about how you felt when you watched the video of Philando Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, and their 4- year-old daughter in the back of the police vehicle while Castile died of gunshot wounds inflicted by Jeronimo Yanez, a St. Anthony, Minnesota, police. Regardless of whatever race you are, it is painful to watch and to listen to the 4- year-old girl tells her mother “It’s OK, Mommy … it’s OK, I’m right here with you,” it hits you hard if you aren’t completely heartless. Which brings us to the impact watching this and other videos of unarmed people (mostly black) getting shot and beaten by the police. Can watching these result in post-traumatic-stress-disorder or even a collective PTSD? How much does untreated PTSD in active duty officers impact these incidents?

According to a Washington Post database, at least 963 people were shot and killed by police in in 2016. There has always been police brutality but only when the videos were circulated widely in social media has the individual and collective psychological impact become more prevalent.

A Huffington Post article about the traumatising effects of watching police brutality videos tells us that “Research suggests that repeated viewing of terrorism news coverage can lead to symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.”

Anissa Moody, a counselling psychologist at the City University of New York points out in a Guardian article that collective trauma is very real and “If we’re all saying we got no sleep, we feel sad, we feel angry – there’s no clearer example of collective trauma than that.”

You may well have seen or heard Dr. Monica Williams, clinical psychologist and director of the Center for Mental Health Disparities at the University of Louisville, in interviews on the subject. She calls the graphic police violence videos “vicarious trauma.” According to Dr. Williams, the fear and anxiety from not trusting people who are in charge of keeping you safe in combination with daily micro-aggressions and discrimination, results in race-based stress and trauma.

What about the rest of the public who are watching these videos? Dr. Williams says that outside the black community, for those who identify in some way with the victims in the police brutality videos there is also the possibility of a resulting PTSD.

She explains that PTSD may be widely associated with combat veterans or a single traumatizing event but that research shows it can also be the result of a series of traumas large and small. In the black community, for example, historical trauma and community trauma, plus the accumulated effect of daily microaggressions and racism results in race-based stress and trauma which is reinforced and exacerbated by the vicarious trauma of viewing the police brutality videos.

It appears to mostly be affecting the current generation actively using social media. Black social media users are twice as likely to see content about race than white users.

How is PTSD affecting law enforcement? According to a Badge of Life a third of active duty officers have PTSD. This is partially due to law enforcement culture which is not conducive to admitting or seeking help for PTSD symptoms which can lead to suicide. One can’t help wonder what the impact would be a combination of more openness about PTSD in law enforcement and de-escalation training on police use of deadly force. Dallas law enforcement has shown that de-escalation training significantly reduced the use of deadly force by officers.

What about PTSD in the black community?

The 2012 census provides us with some idea. 13.2% of the population identifies as black or African American. 16% had a diagnosable mental illness. That’s 6.8 million people. More than the combined populations of Chicago, Huston, and Philadelphia.

The first thing that must be done is to follow Dallas law enforcement lead and requiring de-escalation training across the country. Then, the PTSD in black communities must be more widely recognized and addressed.

Black parents can’t stop their children from seeing these videos once they are out in social media but can have a talk with them so that they can not only process what they have seen but also to explain that to watch more than once or all the way through, could literally affect their health and well-being. On top of that, given that there is literally next to no support for the medical community to screen for and treat PTSD in the communities that need it most, it seems the only approach is for communities themselves to come together for a dialogue in order to process together the impact of race-based trauma and these police brutality videos have had on families and community.

Imagine if we trained law enforcement across the country in de-escalation and black communities could process their trauma as a community. Is it possible this will get the healing started?