The Mental Health Impact of Racism and Police Violence

Emily St. Amant:

Hello and welcome to the Voice of Counseling from the American Counseling Association. I'm Emily St. Amant. And before we begin today, we wanted to let our listeners know that this episode does feature a conversation related to experiences of racism and police violence. For our ACA members, we are excited to let you know that February's free CEE of the month will be on a journal article from the Journal of Counseling Development co-authored by today's guest. So keep an eye out for that. Joining me today is Dr. Darius Green, who's here to talk about the mental health impact of racism and police violence. Dr. Darius Green is an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. His clinical interests have included substance use counseling, trauma-Informed counseling and work with intimate partner violence survivors and offenders. His research and scholarly interests have included race-based traumatic stress, counselors' roles in addressing undue police violence, cyber racism, and integrating social justice into professional counseling. Thank you so much for joining us today, Dr. Green. How are you?

Dr. Darius Green:

I'm doing well today. Thank you for having me.

Emily St. Amant:

Yeah, I think we're so lucky to have you here today and to hop into it, a lot of your focus has been on studying anti-racism, efforts related to that and advocacy, and can you talk about how that area of interest began for you?

Dr. Darius Green:

Yeah, I'd say that area of interest really started early on for me, even dating back to undergraduate studies, just learning about racial differences in psychology studies. It always just piqued my interest. And when I started my master's program back in 2015, it became an even bigger interest due to the murder of Mike Brown in 2014. Really just provided a context for me to critically analyze race in real time using my own experiences and my experiences of my peers. And so to hop into my master's program with that, I think just through multicultural courses, through my practicum and internship experiences, I really began to just be really curious about the ways that race came into play, into the context of clients' lives and their wellness and mental health. And it made me really curious what counselors' roles could and should be in supporting the mental health and wellness of people who experienced racism.

Emily St. Amant:

Okay. So it was a lot of exposure to national events, your own experiences, experiences you heard about probably time and time again. And this is a theme here. We're all telling the same story and this is definitely impacting me. It's impacting people I know and impacting my clients. So I want to learn more and figure out what counselors can, what's the situation with the counselor field and how we address these things. But then also what can we do?

Dr. Darius Green:

Yeah, definitely.

Emily St. Amant:

Yeah. So when it comes to in race we hear it defined as a social construct and it determines so much of our life experiences, so how someone's cultural identity, how does that factor into a lot of their experiences? And you've studied in particular undue police violence, so what impact or what intersection between someone's cultural identity and how that impacts their mental health and wellness?

Dr. Darius Green:

Yeah. When I think about undo police violence and some of the research I've done in reading I've done, I think cultural identity is often a central and salient factor, even if we recognize it or don't recognize it as being a factor. I think oftentimes when we think about law enforcement as a system, we think about it as functioning to promote safety from quote unquote criminals or people who are identified as having threats. And just from reading literature and bringing a critical lens to the topic of criminalization, what often is cases that the behaviors that are criminalized in our society are often very much tied into cultural and social identities.

Dr. Darius Green:

And so when we think about police violence, I think some cases with race, it oftentimes stands out with history in the United States, such as with racial profiling, for example, of Black people being a hot topic, across other racial identities, those who are stereotyped or assumed to be immigrants, for example, they might be targeted more so by immigration officers. And so I think cultural identity plays a really big factor even beyond race. If we think about gender identity and sexuality, trans folks for example, may experience police interactions that are quite different than cis-gendered folks.

Dr. Darius Green:

We think about other populations that frequently interface with law enforcement officers, their identity is going to be salient. I'm thinking of houseless people, those who use substances for example, they might be specifically targeted or might be in situations where they're more likely to engage with law enforcement officers and their uses of force. And so when we think about mental health and wellness, identity is so salient, I like to bring a trauma-informed lens. And so I'm looking at how a post-traumatic response might result from police interaction. The ways in which people are affected tend to involve some poor mental health outcomes such as anxiety, various forms of psychological distress, symptoms of PTSD, so on and so forth.

Dr. Darius Green:

From a trauma-informed theory and perspective, the ways that people navigate in response to that potentially traumatic experience of police use of force is often going to be centralized around one's identity. Someone may blame their identity, someone through the course of healing, they may develop some critical consciousness about their racial identity or their other identities that are salient to that interaction. So to summarize that, it's cultural and social identities are often very salient to being targeted and also salient to the post-traumatic response and the healing responses that we ideally hope for as clinicians.

Emily St. Amant:

And am I hear you describing, correct me if I'm wrong here, but it sounds almost like it's a vicious cycle where someone is more likely to encounter these experiences and have potentially traumatic experiences with police interactions and then consequently that makes them even more likely to experience more interactions. So it does seem like a cycle for some people and that get caught up in the carceral system.

Dr. Darius Green:

Yeah, certainly. It is a vicious cycle. If you think about police violence and law enforcement officers as being an initial interaction that could lead people to being incarcerated, that initial interaction of even just the arrest itself can produce mental health symptoms. Incarceration, I often think about being imprisoned as being in a violent environment. And as a result of that, when people are eventually released from prison, you might expect them to have learned ways that they might use to protect themselves from the perception of a frequent and ongoing threat. Or they might not have resources and they might rely on what they learned while in prison to navigate their social world, putting them at even further risk of experiencing more police violence, more arrests and further incarceration.

Emily St. Amant:

And you studied this topic pretty extensively. And your article in particular, the title of that's "Undue Police Violence Towards African Americans and Analysis of Professional Counselors Training and Perceptions." So if you give us an overview of what the study was about, what exactly were you investigating and what did y'all find?

Dr. Darius Green:

Yeah, so that study originated from my dissertation. And the idea really came from the fact that, again, when entering my doctoral studies, I didn't really see a lot of academic literature or really any conversation about this phenomenon of undue police violence from within our field. There were some resources, I think the "Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development," for example, had a special issue, so that was a great resource, but there wasn't really anything persistent in our field. There were some things in other fields that seemed budding, particularly public health and some counseling psychology as well.

Dr. Darius Green:

But that really made me question to what degree we as counselors and as a profession are competent in addressing undue police violence in our various roles and the various hats that we wear. And it also made me curious, what are we actually doing? What is being done if it's not documented in literature? I wanted to maybe capture some of that, really with the intent of establishing some sort of a baseline for what we're doing and how we can improve as a profession and as individuals. And so some major findings from that study, one thing that really stood out to me was that over half of the participants who participated in my study had noted that they had worked with clients who experienced undue police violence, but very few had received any form of training either regarding clinical practice or regarding social justice and advocacy.

Dr. Darius Green:

And that really stood out to me as a bit shocking, particularly when looking at different forms of force and asking participants to identify what would be considered undo in this situation. And then that context or that question, anything could be considered undo because it's very subjective to the person who's experiencing it. And just seeing differences around which types of force we're considered undue, specifically frisking in the use of a canine, they were considered undue less often than other forms of force like sexual contact and use of physical force and things like that. So some broad things that I noticed from the data were that there are potentially gaps in knowledge regarding undue police violence in this impact. At the same time I noticed that there seemed to be somewhere between neutral and positive attitudes towards the general topic of undue police violence.

Dr. Darius Green:

And that gave me a little bit of hope that there's, at least on the attitude and level, there are some things that are useful for counselors that they can build off of. But I noticed that there were maybe some gaps in knowledge. And lastly, in terms of action and advocacy, implementing knowledge and skill, I noticed that there are also more gaps, particularly with advocacy itself. I'm using ACAs advocacy competencies, the individual community school organization domain, and then the public arena domain. As we moved from individual to the public arena, there was less and less advocacy that was engaged in. And that suggests that a lot of the advocacy that was being engaged in was likely aligned with maybe our traditional roles of individual or group counseling. Not so much in the communities that we work in and serve in or the schools that we are employed in. And even less so with social-political topics, things like politics and so on and so forth.

Emily St. Amant:

Okay. So it sounds like based on who you actually talked to and surveyed a lot of people have, that stands out to me a lot, have worked with clients or students that experience and undue police violence and a lot of them, they care about it. You said you have reason to hope, people want to know how to best support their clients, but that there's a general lack of what do I do with, how do I best support this person that's experienced this? And you're right, that's not something that we routinely get trained in. I will speak for my own personal experience, no, you can consider it lumped into trauma or things like that, but there's a lot of nuances that are very different with this situation here.

Dr. Darius Green:

Yeah, I just think that it's any race-related topic, whether it's going to be police violence, whether it's going to be anti-Blackness, anti-Asian sentiment, xenophobia. I think there's often a lack of time spent in training within one's counseling program. There's some structural reasons for that for sure, with kid prep accreditation or just any educational standards that are guiding a program. But also when that's the case, we also might expect that there are going to be less professional development and through conferences or webinars, people often have to engage in the education on their own, which can be very time-consuming. I'm just thinking about clinicians who have large caseloads, where does one find the time to learn about what it means to be competent to address racial-related issues or undue police violence.

Emily St. Amant:

So we need to do a better job overall of equipping counselors with best practices for addressing these experiences. So based on what your research and your just general expertise in this topic, what are some things that counselors can do to best support their clients and advocate for populations that have been impacted by police violence?

Dr. Darius Green:

I would say really following a trend that got a lot of popularity, it certainly isn't new, but really learning about practices that focus on anti-racism, decolonization and liberation, really as a guiding framework for shaping and reshaping the work that we do with our clients. One thing that really stood out to me in some of the articles that I read with a lot of the chaos, for lack of a better word, between 2020 and 2021, was really reshaping our practices as to really focus in on healing and supporting our clients in healing as opposed to just helping our clients cope. And for just helping a client cope with something like racism, maybe through policing, we're not really challenging the system that's at place. We're putting a lot of responsibility on the client to learn something to help them get by.

Dr. Darius Green:

And that often communicates this message that it's your responsibility as opposed to our collective responsibility to produce conditions where people can feel safe and secure in their environment without the fear of law enforcement officers of various kinds impacting their wants and wellbeing. And particularly I think relying on literature being that there's not a ton in the counseling profession or mental health world. There's definitely some that's growing, but turning towards literature that exists outside of academia or outside of academic journals in our field, there are plenty of books from abolitionists, activists and scholars. Abolitionists are often writing about the prison industrial complex that's typically going to tie into incarceration and police violence. And so some well-known authors are Angela Davis, Mariame Kaba, for example, and Andrea Richie. There's three whose work I found really useful. In terms of learning more about trauma as it relates to police violence, Resmaa Menakem's, book My Grandmother's Hand could be another resource too. Dive into a race-related trauma and it specifically touches on law enforcement as well.

Emily St. Amant:

Okay. I think that that's a good starting place, like you said, because a lot of people, if they want to learn more, right now it's on us individually, and that's part of our ethics, is to do our research and to learn how to be competent. So I think that those are some great resources that are going to be really helpful for people. And when it comes to our general need to be culturally responsive as counselors, that historical context, historical cultural context that our clients are from and they exist in is really important for us to understand and seek to continually update ourselves. So you've offered some suggestions already on ways we can do our homework, but is any other, in particular to learn more about the history of marginalization of the Black community and how this is trickled down to the impact that's still happening today that's impacting people's health and wellness? Is there any recommendations that you have for that?

Dr. Darius Green:

Yeah, I mean, in addition to reading books and literature on the topic, I think that in the clinical work that we do, our clients are provide a wealth of resources. They're not isolated individual human beings. They are a culmination of their cultural history. And so I think we can utilize our clients narrative as well. Ideally, not in a non-exploitative way, but naturally what comes up in our sessions. Hopefully if we're broaching with our clients and allowing them the space to talk about their cultural identity and cultural experiences, we could simply trust and validate our clients' experiences as being true and honest and using that to help inform ourselves, that can help us pick up on cultural practices that maybe our clients have learned from their family members and their ancestors to cope with things that have been around for longer than any of us have been alive, any of the systemic racism and anti-Blackness for example. We can use that to inform ourselves and also bring that to our clients as, hey, this is something that you've cultivated and developed from your cultural background and your family.

Dr. Darius Green:

I would just often really emphasize the importance of actually setting aside time to really read, critically read and evaluate oneself, our own beliefs and attitudes. Something that I've noticed in just advocacy I've done around the topic of police violence is that many people, maybe in their own internal fear, they might avoid reading. That's been a pretty big topic nationally with the concept of banning books. And so I would really encourage people to seek out information that would challenge oneself, to think critically. And I would also encourage people to not do that alone. Maybe even in the context of a book club. Sometimes book clubs can be a little performative and surface level, but having other people to support each other collectively in learning a difficult topic and a new topic and a new way of thinking can be a really helpful way of learning and implementing some change regarding cultural, historical knowledge around anti-Blackness and systemic racism.

Emily St. Amant:

Okay. I think that that's a great summary because when we do our homework, we read, we research, we reflect, and then we're open to learning from our clients. Because like you said, everyone, people who come from the same family have different experiences and so it's going to so different based on each individual, but when you do those things, you are more open. You can pick up on those things with your client. They don't have to, I think avoiding or asking our clients to do labor for us. You tell me about your culture, I've done my homework and I'm ready to hear what this means to you because we don't want to put that undue burden on them, but all of these things can help us to really meet people where they are. And like you said, really move beyond just coping, but actually finding healing. And to not do that alone, I think that that stands out to me as the most important thing.

Dr. Darius Green:

Yeah, I think it's really hard to consistently challenge oneself and the beliefs and attitudes that we adopt in our socialize, to believe from our social world, it's hard to do that consistently in isolation. I would say much more effective to do that in a caring and compassionate community of people.

Emily St. Amant:

Yeah, absolutely. And when it comes to community, we've talked a lot about the challenges that people experience, but when it comes to the wins and strengths of the communities that are impacted by systemic oppression, marginalization, what are some wins and strengths that you've seen? And maybe some reasons for hope, like you said?

Dr. Darius Green:

Yeah, just some things I noticed which aren't really new, but just to highlight and point out, I think a consistent resistance towards anti-Blackness is something that I've appreciated seeing and appreciated feeling myself. In and outspokenness, I think oftentimes it's very natural to want to quiet down and just keep one's head down to avoid being hurt and harmed. And I would consider that sort of a form of assimilating to systemic oppression and the norms of systemic oppression. And so I've appreciated seeing people being actively resistant to systemic oppression and sharing that experience, whether it's through social media or in one's daily life and daily relationships as well. Yeah, I think that one really stands out to me.

Emily St. Amant:

Yeah, that people are being more open and just saying, "This is what it is and this is not okay." And more and more people having the courage to speak out and actually, and it's hard to stand up to people or call people out and call them in. That's not the easiest thing to do. So it is really cool to see more and more people being willing to do that. When it comes to building a more equitable future for everybody and looking to making a difference to make changes where the harm is starting in the first place instead of just the upstream, downstream metaphor that public health is so often I think is very helpful. How do you see counselors being a positive change directly with their clients and students and communities, but also being a part of positive change on a larger scale?

Dr. Darius Green:

Yeah. I honestly think that counselors need to do a much better job. Just again, going off some things for my research. I think that there's a lot of comfort maybe in that individual level of work, working directly with clients. I think counselors need to be more engaged in the communities that they're involved in and that they provide services for, both in terms of clinical practice and also in terms of advocacy. I think that counselors can really focus on developing mutually beneficial relationships that inherently value members of their community that have historically been marginalized and faced oppression. And I think that counselors can do a better job of really distancing themselves from the idea that the person and political or that the politics don't need to be integrated into counseling. I think that the personal, is political and that we need to be talking about these topics in our sessions.

Dr. Darius Green:

We need to be talking about them in our communities, and we need to be engaged in creating the systemic change that we want to see. The evidence in the literature has been documented quite a bit in terms of the impact of various forms of oppression like racism, racist policing as well on mental health and wellbeing. And so I think that counselors really just need to find some comfort and skill and actually engaging in systems and engaging in communities and moving beyond just providing clinical services. Because that's, honestly, it's not enough. That's the reaction we need, something that's more preventative and something that is more focused on deconstructing systems that inherently cause harm.

Emily St. Amant:

Yeah, absolutely. So there's a lot that we can be doing and like you said, doing a better job of when it comes to advocating for changes that are needed to things that are causing the harm to our clients, to our students, to us, to our communities in the first place.

Dr. Darius Green:

Yeah.

Emily St. Amant:

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us for this incredibly important conversation. Dr. Green, if you want to, we'll wrap up with, if people want to learn more, how can people find you?

Dr. Darius Green:

Yeah, some quick ways to contact me on social media via Instagram or Twitter. My handles are Darius A Green, that's D-A-R-I-U-S A G-R-E-E-N. It's a pretty quick way to get in contact with me.

Emily St. Amant:

Awesome. Thank you so much for your time for the challenge and yeah, thank you so much. Thank you to all of our listeners for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe to the Voice of Counseling on Apple and Google Podcasts, and you can follow the ACA on social media to learn more about what the ACA is up to and get notified about future episodes. Our annual ACA conference and expo is just around the corner, and this year we're going to Toronto, Ontario. This will be held from March 30th to April 1st, and more information can be found at counseling.org/conference/toronto-2023. To join the ACA and get exclusive access to all the member benefits check out counseling.org.

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