Policing and Anxiety within Black Communities

In regards of the mental well-being of marginalized communties, the effect of policing is a major factor of concern. Black communties especially are a good model of this concern, as those individuals tend to have disproportionately more negative feeling and experiences around police than white individuals. In a study titled Viewing Violent policing videos contributes to trauma symptoms for Black Americans by Glenna L. Read, Harry Y. Yan, and Rachel L. Bailey, it was found that aside from greater exposure to negative police experiences and witnesses of police brutality, Black communities also felt more worry about being stereotyped as criminals, as well as overall lower well-beings and greater trauma symptoms.

The worksheet presented on this page aims to ask various questions around how policing might appear in the reader's personal experience (whether first-hand or via experiences family/friends have had) and how they themselves personally feel around such experiences. The worksheet doesn't specify a focus on Black racial background specfically, as to allow for this to be useful for other marginalized groups as well, but the worksheet does have a primarily black perspective in mind. There are a few questions that ask how often one experiences certain feelings or occurrences via a Never-to-Constant scale, but most questions are free-writes, and the final question of the worksheet allows for participants to write down any final thoughts that they feel are worth specifying that may have been failed to be addressed in the worksheet itself if need be.

This worksheet should hopefully act as a means for particpants to be able to share their experiences in a way that may be more comfortable than if they were to speak directly to the counselor about these ideas, as well as neatly layout the elements of the participants thoughts and feelings on a physical document so he counselor can easily keep track of and note down if need be. This worksheet is meant more as a background check on a person to underatnd where they are coming from in terms of feelings and experience, and from here the counselor can figure out what the next steps should be.

Citations:

Read, G. L., Yan, H. Y., & Bailey, R. L. (2025). Viewing violent policing videos contributes to trauma symptoms for Black Americans. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology, 31(2), 256–265. https://doi.org/10.1037/cdp0000632