Activists for racial justice have long expressed concern that the rash of headline-grabbing police killings of black Americans was damaging the mental well-being of African-American communities.
A report published in The Lancet, a leading British medical journal, on Thursday appears to give credence to those concerns.
Using mental health survey data and a database of police shootings, a team of health researchers concluded that when police officers in the United States kill unarmed black people, it damages the mental health of black Americans living in those states.