“Am I Next?”: A qualitative study of Black college students’ experiences of stress, trauma, and grief from exposures to police killings

ABSTRACT

There is little research that explores the experiences of Black people exposed to police killings of other unarmed Blacks, despite the fact these incidents repeatedly and disproportionately affect this population. While some quantitative studies have examined the impacts of police violence exposure on mental health in recent years, there remains a dearth of in-depth qualitative research exploring the processes through which chronic exposures to police killings contribute to traumatic and complex life experiences for Black people, particularly. Informed by theories of critical race, stress and cognitive appraisal, historical trauma, and loss and grief, this qualitative study used in-depth semi-structured interviews to explore the experiences of stress, trauma, and grief among Black undergraduate college students exposed to police killings of other unarmed Black people, and to examine the perceived impacts of these experiences in the lives of students and their close personal networks.

KEYWORDS:

• Police killings
• stress
• trauma
• grief
• Black college students

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the study participants for generously sharing their time and experiences with us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The research reported in this publication was supported by a one-year doctoral fellowship awarded to the first author for the completion of her dissertation project.