Department of Family and Consumer Studies, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112;
Department of Family and Consumer Studies, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Apr 27;118(17). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2019624118.
Highly public anti-Black violence in the United States may cause widely experienced distress for Black Americans. This study identifies 49 publicized incidents of racial violence and quantifies national interest based on Google searches; incidents include police killings of Black individuals, decisions not to indict or convict the officer involved, and hate crime murders. Weekly time series of population mental health are produced for 2012 through 2017 using two sources: 1) Google Trends as national search volume for psychological distress terms and 2) the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) as average poor mental health days in the past 30 d among Black respondents (mean weekly sample size of 696). Autoregressive moving average (ARMA) models accounted for autocorrelation, monthly unemployment, season and year effects, 52-wk lags, news-related searches for suicide (for Google Trends), and depression prevalence and percent female (for BRFSS). National search interest varied more than 100-fold between racial violence incidents. Black BRFSS respondents reported 0.26 more poor mental health days during weeks with two or more racial incidents relative to none, and 0.13 more days with each log increase in national interest. Estimates were robust to sensitivity tests, including controlling for monthly number of Black homicide victims and weekly search interest in riots. As expected, racial incidents did not predict average poor mental health days among White BRFSS respondents. Results with national psychological distress from Google Trends were mixed but generally unsupportive of hypotheses. Reducing anti-Black violence may benefit Black Americans' mental health nationally.
美国境内广为人知的反黑人暴力事件可能会给美国黑人带来广泛的痛苦。本研究确定了 49 起公开的种族暴力事件，并根据谷歌搜索量化了全国的关注度；这些事件包括警察杀害黑人、决定不起诉或不判定涉事警察有罪，以及仇恨犯罪谋杀。使用两个来源，即 1）谷歌趋势作为心理困扰相关词汇的全国搜索量，以及 2）行为风险因素监测系统（BRFSS）作为过去 30 天内黑人受访者平均心理健康状况不佳的天数（黑人每周平均样本量为 696），为 2012 年至 2017 年生成了每周时间序列人口心理健康数据。自回归移动平均（ARMA）模型考虑了自相关、每月失业率、季节性和年度效应、52 周滞后、与自杀相关的新闻搜索（用于谷歌趋势），以及 BRFSS 中的抑郁患病率和女性比例。种族暴力事件之间的全国搜索兴趣差异超过 100 倍。在有两起或两起以上种族事件的周内，BRFSS 的黑人受访者报告的心理健康状况不佳的天数比没有种族事件的周多 0.26 天，与全国关注度每增加一个对数，多 0.13 天。这些估计结果在敏感性测试中是稳健的，包括控制每月黑人凶杀案受害者人数和每周对暴乱的搜索兴趣。不出所料，种族事件并没有预测 BRFSS 中白人受访者的平均心理健康状况不佳天数。谷歌趋势的全国心理困扰结果喜忧参半，但总体上不支持假设。减少反黑人暴力可能会使美国黑人的全国心理健康受益。
