Psychologist Robert T. Carter published an influential model of race-based traumatic stress in 2007. He argued that racism can cause symptoms similar to other trauma, including anxiety, hypervigilance, intrusive thoughts and avoidance. Racial trauma is not a formal diagnosis in the DSM, but clinicians increasingly screen for it.
Racial trauma can be collective. A 2018 study in The Lancet found that police killings of unarmed Black Americans were associated with more days of poor mental health among Black adults in the same state in the following months. White adults in those states showed no such effect. Repeated viewing of videos of police violence is one way the harm spreads.
The stress adds up over time and can affect physical health, a process researchers call weathering. It can also pass across generations through family stories and conditions. Responses include culturally responsive therapy, community healing practices and policy changes that reduce the source of harm. Treating the symptoms alone leaves the cause in place.