One year of trauma after Ferguson: ‘I’m overwhelmed’

The resulting symptoms can be devastating for individuals and their families. People with PTSD may suffer nightmares or flashbacks and be easily startled. They may feel emotionally numb — detaching themselves from loved ones and activities they once enjoyed. They may be plagued by guilt, depression and worry. PTSD can also lead to angry outbursts, relationship problems and family violence, experts say.

It’s clear that many black Americans experience what psychologists call “race-based trauma.” But whether racism — particularly if an individual doesn’t experience it personally — can lead to PTSD remains a debate among mental health professionals.

A year ago today, Michael Brown was gunned down by a white cop in the middle of the street in Ferguson, Mo.

The 12 months since have visited one searing trauma after another on black Americans: Tamir Rice, Renisha McBride, Eric Harris, Walter Scott, John Crawford III , Sandra Bland and Samuel DuBose; nine dead in Charleston at the hands of a white supremacist; a teenage girl in her swimsuit body-slammed to the ground by a white policeman.

“I cringe when I see a police officer now because they represent my mortality,” says Alyssa Johnson, an Atlanta writer. “I no longer view them as law enforcers, but murderers. I worry: will today be the day my picture is posted on Facebook because of something a police officer did to me?”

Johnson then offers a pronouncement that has been debated in psychiatric circles for decades.

“Racial PTSD is a real thing,” she says.

Medical experts and psychologists are still arguing whether racial post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a legitimate diagnosis. What is not in question, however, is that racial trauma —perhaps dating back 400 years — is real and the events of the past year have only heightened the effect.

“It’s nothing new,” said Marissa Coleman, a licensed clinical psychologist in Atlanta. “ It’s been going on for centuries, but the exposure to these events, because of the media, has really sensationalized it.”

Racial trauma has been a widespread phenomenon not limited to the black community.

Ryan Day, an Atlanta counselor, said he sees Hispanic, black and even white clients come in to talk about their experiences with racial trauma.

“With Ferguson, with Charleston, it’s having an effect on the black community, Hispanic and the country as a whole, “ Day said.

The American Psychiatric Association recognizes racism as trauma but only in certain cases.

But even the daily stream of indignities — seemingly routine traffic stops, being followed in a department store, inadequate schools and resources — can add up, experts say. Sufferers’ initial shock and denial can turn into longer term effects — unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, strained relationships with loved ones and even physical symptoms, such as headaches.

“I’m overwhelmed by the constant stream of horrendous acts committed by police, along with the never ending heaping of racially motivated murder and mayhem,” said Andrea Ashmore, an Atlanta-based public relations professional. “I deliberately haven’t watched Sandra Bland’s arrest video because my heart and soul can’t take any more assaults.”

‘I knew I wasn’t alone’

Last month, video blogger and social media manager Evelyn Ngugi sat at her desk in Austin and looked at images of Sandra Bland, the 28-year-old woman who died in a Texas jail of an apparent suicide three days after being arrested on a minor traffic violation.

She looked at Bland's mug shot and the dashcam video of Bland's scuffle with a police offer and her arrest.

She looked at Bland's previous Facebook videos, where she posted comments on racial injustice. In one, Bland said she was depressed and traumatized.

Ngugi ran to the bathroom and cried. Then she made her own video, "Call in Black," which discusses the online consumption of racially motivated violence. It also makes a satire of "calling in black," or why continual exposure to racial trauma can be a good reason to call in sick for work.

“I knew I wasn’t alone, which is why I made the video in the first place,” Ngugi said. “I knew it would resonate with people. I can’t figure out whether I’m happy or disheartened that so many others feel the same way I do.”

People often discount the cumulative trauma and traumatic effect these stories of racial violence have on black children and parents, said Joy-Ann Reid is the author of the book, Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons and the Racial Divide, which is set to publish later this year.

“Constantly having your life in jeopardy from every police stop, every minor encounter from someone pretending to be a policeman,” Reid said. “That idea is very traumatizing for an entire group of people.”

When Reid’s own children talk about the recent killings, “they ask why are they killing us, not why are they killing those boys,” she said. “They see themselves in these people who are dying. So what does that do psychologically to us?”

The events in Charleston have made Malcolm Graham more cautious in welcoming strangers. Graham’s sister, Cynthia Hurd, was one of the nine people killed at Emanuel AME.

“Whether it is Walter Scott in North Charleston, or what happened at Emanuel AME church in the basement where nine parishioners were killed during Bible study,” Graham said. “The proliferation of these events make people believe that racism is still alive.”

Racism can cause PTSD, said Silvia L. Mazzula, a psychology professor at John Jay College specializing in racism, discrimination and mental health.

“When Obama became president, the assumption was that we have no more racism,” said Mazzula, who co-authored a race-based traumatic stress study, “Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice and Policy.” “But the reality is that people of color experience racism every day.”

Mazzula’s study found that while depression and anxiety can be emotional reactions to racism — stemming from profiling, police encounters or denied access to services — “how to measure it, as a traumatic event, is new and not well understood.”

The roots of black trauma

It could be argued that any trauma blacks feel now has been lingering for centuries.

“It has been part of our culture since slavery. It is part of our genetic fiber,” said Michael Brooks, a Morehouse College graduate and counseling professor at North Carolina A&T State University. “We incorporate a certain coping strategy to our way of being.”

Bernard Lafayette, the chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and one of the architects of the Selma marches, said the fear and tension that blacks are experiencing is even greater than when he was marching in the 1960s.

“They grew up expecting things to be different. When they see the setbacks — not being able to get a decent education, wanting to work — they feel that we have let them down,” Lafayette said. “When we got involved in the sit-ins, black folks really didn’t expect things to change. There was no expectations. No pain. These kids have high expectations and are frustrated.”

Nyasha Grayman-Simpson, an associate psychology professor and clinician at Gaucher College, believes that vicarious trauma through media exposure is real. She said the watershed moment for her was the Trayvon Martin killing.

Portions of the struggle between 18-year-old Martin and George Zimmerman, who recently claimed he was suffering from PTSD, were recorded.

“There was something about hearing that audio that was so traumatic,” Grayman-Simpson said. “Since that time, we have seen an increase in the video and audio witnessing of these things. You don’t have to be Eric Garner’s wife, mother or daughter to be traumatized to watch him get murdered on television.”

Sultan Simms, a psychiatrist in Atlanta and executive board member for the Georgia Psychiatric Physicians Association, said finding a labeled disorder to give a patient misses the point.

“Even if the symptoms don’t fit neatly into a diagnostic box, there’s still help,” Simms said. “We’re talking about words and names, but trauma is trauma. If that’s how they feel, then it’s likely to affect their lives.”

‘Every time you see me …’

Katie Acosta, a Georgia State University sociology professor and a mother of a 14-year-old black son, finds herself not only teaching young people about how these events can affect communities, but also giving them strategies for survival if and when they find themselves in similar altercations.

“They don’t have the privilege to assume that other people will give them the benefit of the doubt,” Acosta said. “They just don’t. And they have to work around that.”

That burden can be heavy — no matter what the age.

Last July, a month before Brown was killed, the last words Eric Garner said as members of the NYPD choked him to death for selling loose cigarettes were “I can’t breathe,” which became a national rallying cry.

But moments before, as the police officers walked up to 43-year-old Garner — whether he was committing a crime or not — he spoke to those officers for millions of black people.

“I’m tired of you all,” he cried. “Every time you see me you want to harass me. I’m minding my business. Leave me alone. I told you last time: please leave me alone.”

Moments later, he was dead.