Police killings, brutality damaging mental health of black community

by Lisa H. Thurau & Johanna Wald, USA Today
September 14, 2018

The use of deadly force by police against an unarmed black American “carries with it the weight of historical injustices and current disparities in the use of state violence against black Americans,” researchers concluded.

. . .

Boston University and University of Pennsylvania researchers concluded that their findings support “recent calls to treat police killings as a public health issue.” They noted that failure to do so produces mental health issues and health problems: “The observed adverse mental health spillover effects of police killings of unarmed black Americans could result from heightened perceptions of threat and vulnerability, lack of fairness, lower social status, lower beliefs about one’s own worth, activation of prior traumas, and identification with the deceased.”

We suggest going a step further and incorporating a public health perspective into 21st-century policing.

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