Bor J, et al. - Authors evaluated the impacts of the police killings on the mental health of black Americans. Findings suggested adverse effects of police killings of unarmed black Americans on mental health among black American adults in the general population. They suggested the implementation of programmes to decrease the frequency of police killings and to mitigate adverse mental health effects within communities when such killings do occur.

Methods

• In this population-based, quasi-experimental study, to estimate the causal impact of police killings of unarmed black Americans on self-reported mental health of other black American adults in the US general population, authors combined novel data on police killings with individual-level data from the nationally representative 2013–15 US Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS).
• The number of police killings of unarmed black Americans occurring in the 3 months prior to the BRFSS interview within the same state was primary exposure.
• The number of days in the previous month in which the respondent's mental health was reported as “not good” was included in the primary outcome.
• Experts evaluated the difference-in-differences regression models—adjusting for state-month, month-year, and interview-day fixed effects, as well as age, sex, and educational attainment.
• They also assessed the timing of effects, the specificity of the effects to black Americans, and the robustness of these findings.

Results

• Findings suggested that 38,993 (weighted sample share 49%) of 103,710 black American respondents were exposed to one or more police killings of unarmed black Americans in their state of residence in the 3 months prior to the survey.
• They noted an association of each additional police killing of an unarmed black American with 0·14 additional poor mental health days (95% CI 0·07-0·22; p=0·00047) among black American respondents.
• Results demonstrated that the largest effects on mental health occurred in the 1-2 months after exposure, with no significant effects estimated for respondents interviewed before police killings (falsification test).
• As per data, they did not observe the mental health impacts among white respondents and resulted only from police killings of unarmed black Americans (not unarmed white Americans or armed black Americans).