Police Interactions, Perceived Respect, and Longitudinal Changes in Depression in African Americans

Abstract

Introduction: We examined police exchanges' and feelings of discrimination's impact on changes in adolescent depression symptoms. Relative to other races, police speak more disrespectfully to African Americans and often exert unnecessary force. We investigated the impact of these exchanges on depression. Methods: Adolescent Health Study data were analyzed. Latent growth curve modeling with mediation illustrated relationships between police exchanges, perceived discrimination, and depression changes. Results: African American adolescents had significantly higher levels of initial depression than other racial/ethnic identity groups. For African Americans, police exchanges predicted depression changes. Perceived respect predicted levels and changes of depression for both groups, but mediated the relationship between police exchanges and depression changes only in the “other” racial/ethnic identity group. Discussion: Police stoppings impacted depression changes for African Americans independent of perceived respect. Findings highlight a potentially unique relationship between depression and police exchanges among African Americans. Future studies may investigate roles of individual differences.

Police Violence and Public Health

“…Results supported police violence as the likely cause, suggesting that psychiatric symptoms arise from police violence exposure, and not that mental health symptoms increase the risk of interactions with the police. Notably, this finding is consistent both with subjective reports from the limited qualitative research on police violence, which have found that young Black adults are often highly fearful of the police and experience symptoms consistent with clinical definitions of trauma (Lee & Robinson 2019), and with recent longitudinal findings (Bacak & Nowotny 2020, Dennison & Finkeldey 2021, Leib et al 2021.…”