Countless studies have shown the adverse effects of racism.

In the United States, many black people are born into a life of trauma. It is a trauma informed by a long history of brutal inhumanity, repression, violence, and injustice that continues to firmly grip black men and women each and every day.

This trauma is not something any of us who have not had the experience of being black in America can speak to in the same way as someone who has. Yet, acknowledging this trauma and casting it in a broad, unflickering light is all of our responsibility.

Countless studies have shown the adverse physical and psychological effects of racism. “Racism is considered a fundamental cause of adverse health outcomes for racial/ethnic minorities and racial/ethnic inequities in health" (Williams, Lawrence, & Davis, 2019). The experience of individual, institutional, and cultural racism has been found to be uniquely predictive of post-traumatic stress symptoms (Facemire, 2018).

Racial trauma can involve a “negative, sudden, and uncontrollable experience or crisis.” Alternately, it can involve an “ongoing physical or psychological threat that produces feelings of fear, anxiety, depression, helplessness, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)" (Ponds, 2013).

When you witness the kind of grotesque violence against a man like George Floyd, knowing that this could happen to you or someone close to you simply based on your skin color, how can you not feel threatened, afraid, anxious, depressed, helpless?

Yet, as we all know, for many African Americans this trauma didn’t start with George Floyd. Trauma, in general, can be defined as any significant negative event or incident that shaped us and can emerge from any impactful instance that made us feel bad, scared, hurt, or ashamed. “Acts of aggression are not only examples of interpersonal trauma but also the trauma of racism, which is examined through the lens of intergenerational trauma, racist incident-based trauma, and complex trauma" (Bryant-Davis, Adams, Alejandre, & Gray, 2017).

A black child does not even have to directly experience racism to be influenced. A 2017 systematic review of 30 studies looked at how children’s health might be affected by indirectly experienced racism. Researchers concluded that “socioemotional and mental health outcomes were most commonly reported with statistically significant associations with vicarious racism” (Heard-Garris, Cale, Camaj, Hamati, & Dominguez, 2018). Families living in racially and economically segregated communities must also cope with the effects of historical trauma and intergenerational racism. Additionally, they face specific barriers to obtaining needed services. (“Complex Trauma,” 2010)

Another study that looked at how exposure to racism and other Adverse Childhood Experiences affected perinatal women with moderate to severe mental illness, found that “black women were significantly more likely to report conventional and expanded ACEs including experiencing racism and witnessing violence.” The study concluded that “childhood exposure to racism and environmental trauma are important risk categories for perinatal mental illness” (Kim, Kuendig, Prasad, & Sexter, 2020).

Research on the impact of ACEs has left no doubt that early trauma, especially unresolved trauma, impacts the development of emotional regulation skills and distress tolerance. It can lead to “disrupted neurodevelopment and social, emotional and cognitive impairment” (Aaltonen, 2019). ACEs have further been linked with all the leading causes of death, including illnesses such as heart disease, stroke, obesity, diabetes, and cancer, in addition to mental health concerns like depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and suicide.

The physical and emotional wounds of racial trauma can be reopened throughout one’s lifetime. It’s a trauma reawakened when a person is afraid to walk down the street or is pulled over by the police. It is a trauma reignited by disturbing videos of violence and tragedies like the murder of George Floyd. These events can be triggering on a level that is both deeply personal and broadly shared.

Healing from this kind of trauma must occur on a societal and individual level. Part of overcoming trauma is processing what happened to us, feeling the full pain of it, and making sense of the experience. For many black Americans, the experiences they’re trying to process can be ongoing, complex, and utterly senseless. This makes it all the more crucial that we find pathways to provide mental health services in the wake of trauma.

Unfortunately, although black men are exposed to trauma at an alarming rate, findings have suggested that “56-74% of those exposed to traumatic events may have an unmet need for mental health services” (Motley, Banks, 2018). The question we must ask ourselves, in addition to social change, is what can be done to start to address the mental health needs of this community?

For those impacted by the trauma of racism, healing can come from counseling, spirituality, seeking justice, and social support. Racial socialization messages emphasizing cultural pride have also been found to moderate the relationship between racism and post-trauma reactions (Williams, Lawrence, & Davis, 2019).