Aggressive Policing and the Mental Health of Young Urban Men

A new study released in the American Journal of Public Health finds that young men in New York City who report they’ve been stopped and questioned by police are also reporting higher levels of trauma and stress associated with those experiences, particularly when they report that the encounters were intrusive. The study also finds disparities across race: black respondents experienced trauma symptoms at a higher frequency than other races. The study was conducted by a team of researchers at New York University, Columbia University and Yale University. The researchers compared self-reported trauma and anxiety levels among 18- to 26-year-old men in New York City who had been stopped by the police with those who had not been stopped.