Jarrod Doyle was relaxing with friends on July 5 when the hashtag #AltonSterling popped up on his Instagram feed. He tabbed over to Google to search the name. On Facebook, he found a\u00a0graphic video<\/a> of two police officers pinning Sterling to the ground before fatally shooting him in the chest and back six times.<\/p>\n
After watching that video, the 23-year-old Atlanta resident realized his teeth and hands had been clenched the entire time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was instantly angry. I just kind of get that \u2014 it\u2019s like a rage. The rage you really can\u2019t do anything about because you don\u2019t know what the outcome is going to be. You\u2019re just angry. You\u2019re mad at everyone and everything,\u201d Doyle told The Huffington Post.<\/p>\n
As the hours passed, that anger turned into a feeling of helplessness and fear for his own life.<\/p>\n
On July 7, Doyle was scrolling through Facebook when an autoplaying video of Philando Castile\u2019s dying moments appeared in his feed. Castile\u2019s girlfriend, Diamond \u201cLavish\u201d Williams, began recording the video on Facebook Live shortly after a police officer shot Castile during a traffic stop.<\/p>\n
The cycle of rage, tension and fear started all over again.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou never know when the next incident is going to be,\u201d said Doyle, who is a black man himself. \u201cYou never know if you\u2019re going to be that next case.\u201d<\/p>\n
At least 509 people<\/a>\u00a0have been shot and killed by police in the U.S. this year, according to a Washington Post database.\u00a0More and more of those incidents are being captured on mobile phone videos,\u00a0shot mostly by bystanders and then broadcast widely on social media and cable news.<\/p>\n
That means, more and more of us are trying to decide whether to click \u201cplay\u201d ? and trying to deal with our sorrow and despair afterward.<\/p>\n
Research on the psychological effects of watching footage of police brutality is in the early stages. But medical health experts suggest there can be long-term implications ? especially for those, like Doyle, who are the same race as the people being beaten and shot.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s normal to feel sadness, anger and despair after watching a violent video.\u00a0Research suggests that repeated viewing of terrorism news coverage<\/a>\u00a0can lead to symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, especially in people who are already prone to react physically to stress<\/a> or have prior exposure to violence. Scholarship also shows that\u00a0racism can have a traumatizing effect<\/a>\u00a0on its victims.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s not too big a stop to think that all these police brutality videos may be especially damaging to the mental health of African-Americans.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re part of a stigmatized community, so much of your identity is tied up in that community,\u201d explained Monnica Williams, a clinical psychologist and director of the Center for Mental Health Disparities at the University of Louisville. \u201cAnd when you see other people like you who are being victimized, it makes you feel that the world\u2019s not a safe place for people like you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jarrod Doyle was relaxing with friends on July 5 when the hashtag #AltonSterling popped up on his Instagram feed. He tabbed over to Google to search the name. On Facebook, he found a\u00a0graphic video of two police officers pinning Sterling to the ground before fatally shooting him in the chest and back six times. After Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}