It should come as no surprise that well-known police killings like Daunte Wright's can lead to worse mental health for Black Americans specifically, but a new study provides new empirical evidence of that phenomenon.

The paper, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, uses mental health survey and Google search data collected between 2012 and 2017 to better understand how police killings of Black individuals, decisions regarding the indictment or conviction of officers involved in those events, and white supremacist murders of Black victims during that time period influenced Black people's level of psychological distress following the initial violence.

The researchers found that when an officer wasn't convicted or indicted, the development most strongly predicted poorer mental health for Black Americans. White Americans experienced some decline related to publicized incidents of racial violence, but it wasn't statistically significant.

While intuitive, the finding raises an urgent question: How can we treat police violence that disproportionately targets Black people as not just a policing problem but also a mental health crisis?

Read the full article about police killings and Black mental health by Rebecca Ruiz at Mashable.