ptsd
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May Is Mental Health Awareness Month. You Hanging in There?
How you doin’, fam? Obviously, as of late, we’ve been talking a lot about health here at The Root. As the world—and the United States, in particular—faces an unprecedented health crisis in the outbreak of COVID-19, our concerns have largely been focused upon the physical aspects of the coronavirus; how to avoid it, combat it,…
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An Army Soldier Is Being Called a Hero for Saving Children During the El Paso Shooting. He Just Wants to Forget What Happened
An army private is being heralded as a hero for his role in saving kids caught in the mass shooting at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, this weekend. Still, his recollection of the shooting highlights the deep trauma gun and police violence have left on this country. In interviews with multiple outlets, Army…
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During Police Raid, Chicago Officers Handcuffed an 8-Year-Old Boy, Claiming They Had No Idea He Was a Child
If Chicago police are to be believed, they simply don’t know what a black 8-year-old boy looks like. That’s the defense the department is giving for why it handcuffed a child during an early morning raid by Chicago Police Department and SWAT on a family home on March 15. The raid—one of several local news…
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It’s Becoming More Evident: The Stress of Racism Is Killing Our Babies…and Us
If A=B, and B=C, does A=C? Well, not always, but in the case of stress, racism and preterm birth, one researcher thinks there’s a definitive case to be made. The jarring statistics are already out there: African-American women are three to four times more likely to experience a pregnancy-related death than white women. Additionally, African-American…
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Survivor’s Remorse: On Junot Díaz and the Collateral Damage of Trauma
I began this week in tears. Early Monday morning, hot, torrential tears were flowing as if I were in the midst of my last heartbreak—or the one before that, or the one before that. I was reading Junot Díaz’s searingly confessional essay in the New Yorker about confronting and coping with his childhood rape. Like…
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Cop Suffering From PTSD After Pulse Massacre Will Lose His Job
With only six months to go before he’s eligible for a full pension, Cpl. Omar Delgado, one of the first police to respond to the massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, is losing his job. Hailed as a hero in the wake of the June 2016 mass shooting for saving the life of shooting victim…
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Army Reservist Who Killed 5 Dallas Officers Showed PTSD Symptoms: Documents
Micah Johnson, the Army reservist who shot and killed five Dallas police officers in an ambush last month, showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder after returning to the U.S. from Afghanistan in 2014, the Associated Press reports. According to the newly released documents from the Veterans Health Administration, Johnson sought treatment for anxiety, depression and…
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Angry, Paranoid and Trained to Kill: How America Made the Baton Rouge, La., and Dallas Shooters
In the past two weeks, cops in Texas and Louisiana have been ambushed, shot and killed by black men who reportedly were tired of the senseless killings of unarmed black men, women and children by police. I say “reportedly” because we won’t ever know. Both men in question—Micah Xavier Johnson, 25, and Gavin Long, 29—were killed…