Why Watching Black Violence on Repeat Is So Harmful — and How Black Americans Can Protect Their Mental Health

“The continual viewing of videos and images of Black bodies being ruthlessly assaulted, victimized, and murdered, combined with the knowledge that society does not often punish those actions, unquestionably can lead to poor mental health,” Franklin says. This is not only because of the gruesome imagery, but also because some people may believe they can and will be hurt similarly, he explains.

“These effects might appear as feelings of sadness and hopelessness or extreme paranoia, being withdrawn, hypervigilance, and aggressive behavior — all symptoms similar to PTSD,” Franklin says.

Factors like living through a dangerous event or trauma, seeing another person hurt, seeing a dead body, and feelings of horror, helplessness, or extreme fear increase the risk of a person developing PTSD, according to the National Institute for Mental Health.

Repeated exposure to microaggressions, bullying, discrimination in the workplace, racial profiling by police, hate crimes, and constant reminders of racial trauma can cause a reexperiencing of the trauma or a state of hyperarousal, research shows.

A study published in April 2021 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) specifically looked at how media coverage of police killings and other violent, racial incidents affect Black Americans’ mental health. The data suggests Black Americans’ mental health worsened during weeks coverage of these incidents was higher.

The researchers identified 49 highly publicized anti-Black violence incidents (such as police killings of Black people and hate crimes) between 2013 and 2017.

The researchers then measured the number of Google searches that included the name of a Black victim of racial violence and the incident following those events — and compared those numbers with how the participants in the study rated their weekly mental health during the weeks that coverage of those events was high.

The study found that participants reported an increase in poor mental health days during weeks when two or more incidents of anti-Black violence occurred and when national interest surrounding the events was higher.

The PNAS study also found that legal decisions where officers involved in racial violence were not indicted were most strongly associated with poor mental health days for Blacks, highlighting the unique importance of legal proceedings to influence Black Americans’ mental health may be due to the role of perceived injustice.