The emotional and mental health impact of the murder of George Floyd on the US population

Abstract

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, an unarmed Black American male, was killed by a White police officer. Footage of the murder was widely shared. We examined the psychological impact of Floyd's death using two population surveys that collected data before and after his death; one from Gallup (117,568 responses from n = 47,355) and one from the US Census (409,652 responses from n = 319,471). According to the Gallup data, in the week following Floyd's death, anger and sadness increased to unprecedented levels in the US population. During this period, more than a third of the US population reported these emotions. These increases were more pronounced for Black Americans, nearly half of whom reported these emotions. According to the US Census Household Pulse data, in the week following Floyd's death, depression and anxiety severity increased among Black Americans at significantly higher rates than that of White Americans. Our estimates suggest that this increase corresponds to an additional 900,000 Black Americans who would have screened positive for depression, associated with a burden of roughly 2.7 million to 6.3 million mentally unhealthy days.

Keywords: mental health; police killings; public health; racism; social inequality.

Fig. 1.

(A and B) Weekly percentage of the respondents reporting having experienced anger (A) and sadness (B) in the representative 2020 Gallup Panel COVID-19 survey. Percentages and error bars (indicating SEs) are weighted estimates derived through poststratification on gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education, and region. Histograms on the right show associated distributions of weeks; the arrows point to the week after Floyd’s death and are labeled with SDs across all 2020 weeks (z scores). (C and D) Increases of anger (C) and sadness (D) experienced by different racial, gender, age, and political groups in the week after Floyd’s death (June 1 to 7) compared to the four baseline weeks (April 27 to May 24); shaded boxes indicate SEs; colors have been added to aid readability. Gallup did not provide weights suitable for the subgroup analysis in C and D; they are unweighted means and SEs. The Overall arrow is based on Gallup weights (same as A and B). Between-bar significances are calculated as the proportion of bootstrapped samples with a greater difference than the observed. *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001; ^†P < 0.1.

Fig. 2.

Increases in anxiety and depression as standardized effect sizes (Cohen’s $d$ values) comparing the five weeks before Floyd’s death (April 23 to May 26) to the week following Floyd’s death (May 28 to June 2) using data from the US Census Household Pulse survey. Depression was measured by using the PHQ-2 and anxiety using the GAD-2 screener. We used the sum of the person-level item scores to estimate total symptom severity. Estimates incorporate Census-provided weights for age, gender, education, race, and nonresponse. Significance tests of bars are based on a weighted $t$ test; significance between bars is based on a $z$ test comparing the two $d$ values. See SI Appendix for full methods. *P < 0.05; ***P < 0.001.

Fig. 3.

(A) Increases in sadness and anger reported in the week following Floyd’s death compared to the four baseline weeks (analogous to Fig. 1 C and D). Increases in anger and sadness were significantly larger in Minnesota than in other states during the same period. (B) Increases in anxiety and depression as standardized effect sizes (Cohen’s d values) during the week of Floyd’s death, as compared to the previous five-week baseline period using data from the US Census Household Pulse survey (analogous to Fig. 2). While anxiety and depression symptom severity increased significantly (P < 0.001) nationwide in response to Floyd’s death, these increases were more pronounced in Minnesota. *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001; ^†P < 0.1.