“The rate of black Americans showing clinically significant signs of anxiety or depressive disorders jumped from 36 percent to 41 percent in the week after the video of Floyd’s death became public. That represents roughly 1.4 million more people.”
“It can feel like it’s happening to you over and over,” said Wizdom Powell, director of the University of Connecticut’s Health Disparities Institute. “You start seeing symptoms of hyper vigilance, emotional numbing and secondary trauma.”
“With the George Floyd killing and other killings, we don’t have a personal connection to those individuals. But it could have been us or someone we know, and that does lead to additional stress and anxiety around these incidents.”