Racial Trauma. TikTok. And Therapy.

Welcome back, friends! Today you’ve clicked on the first of what will be an on-going series where I share some recent scientific publications from well-known Journals that focus on people and all of our complexities. These blog posts will highlight one recent publication and try to explain what that publication is saying to people like you and me.

Today we will be reviewing a recent publication from the Journal of Contemporary Family Therapy titled: BIPOC Experiences of Racial Trauma on TikTok: A Qualitative Content Analysis. The full citation for this can be found at the bottom of this blog. So lets get into it. What did these researchers find?

First, this study starts off by reminding us that racial discrimination/racial trauma is still widely experienced in the United States and continues to be associated with increased mental health risks for people of color. This study reminds us that there are complex reasons for this including past traumas with medical professionals on not just a personal level but a generational level as well stigma. Therefore, this study asks the question of how are people discussing their traumas on social media. Platforms that may feel safer to share personal and traumatic things while informing a larger audience. So what did the study look like?

This study stated that it created its own social media account on TikTok to search for videos using the search term #racialtrauma. In total they selected 24 videos to be included into their qualitative analysis. For those of you that might not know, qualitative analysis uses interviews, videos, blog posts, etc. to look for patterns and themes amongst the participants. There are different processes these researchers follow to mitigate bias to the best of their ability. If we were to put the processes to mitigate bias on a scale of “good, great, best”, my review of their methods would fall into the great category. These researchers used 3 methods of bias check whereas many articles aim for two. But the important content here is the 6 patterns the researchers discovered.

Findings

Lets review. Researchers wanted to gain a greater understanding of BIPOC experiences with trauma as described on Tik Tok. From the 24 videos they watched they found 6 common patterns: 1. Encountering racism, 2. Experiencing traumatic events, 3. Facing consequences of racial trauma, 4. Expressing difficult emotions, 5. Questioning and challenging oppression, denial, and privilege, and 6. Calling for action to raise awareness. Lets break this down further.

Theme 1: Encountering Racism

The majority of these videos (67%) shared that they had encountered racism between them and at least one other person OR they had encountered racism between them and another system, think education, healthcare, etc.

Theme 2: Traumatic Experiences

Five of the content creators selected for this study explicitly stated that the encounter they were describing felt traumatic. Well get into why I believe this theme to be uniquely important despite its lower frequency.

Theme 3: Consequences of Racial Trauma

Half of the content creators reported that these encounters had lasting consequences on their biological, psychological, and social functioning. These videos reporting symptoms of physical distress such as throwing up and psychological distress including lower self-esteem and paranoia.

Theme 4: Express Difficult Feelings Regarding Racial Trauma

Again half of the content creators reported an increase in negative feelings following these encounters. The researchers specifically share the following feelings: unfairness, loneliness, resentment, alienation, anger, and fear.

Theme 5: Questioning and Challenging Oppression, Denial, and Privilege

Over half of the creators in this study openly shared the questions that were brought up for them as a result of this experience including questions like, “how do people still not believe that this is happening 400 years later”? or “Why do people think it’s okay to yell at me”?

Theme 6: A Call to Action: Raising Awareness

Our final theme emerged from nine videos sort of bringing a “Call to Action” approach. They expressed that they felt social media was one of the best ways to raise awareness of these still ever-present issues in an attempt to promote change.

Now what?

There are two important take aways from the discussion section of this article for me: 1. How some of these reported experiences align with some of the symptoms of PTSD and 2. We know that the mental health field is disproportionately white which may make clients of color less likely to directly discuss these topics and mental health professionals need to be aware of that.

This study was interesting to me on multiple fronts. First, I do think people are much more likely to share their experiences on social media and it be met with a much larger audience. I think there is a lot for us to take away from people who are willing to be vulnerable about their experiences. Second, even if these creators are not my clients, my clients are seeing/interacting with these posts and videos. Not only could it be challenging for them to hear about racist encounters from people who look similar to them but it may dredge up their own experiences with racism and those experiences still need a place to be validated and processed. I know there have been moments in my day where I am aimlessly scrolling social media and come across a video that leaves me thinking, “man I really did not want to see or hear that today” and then feeling like I need to do some self-care rather quickly. Therefore, I really believe this could be the experience of some of my clients who encounter racism regularly and then may even be reminded of that while casually scrolling social media.

You might be reading this and either feeling validated over how your own experiences with racism were validated by this study or potentially reflecting on which of these themes are reflective of your own experience and if they have been, I hope you have a mental health professional you feel safe discussing these things with. If you don’t, might I recommend two therapists of color?

Zachary Trevino, his information can be found here.

Kiarra Watts, her information can be found here.

If you’re a clinician or any other sort of mental health professional I hope this offered some insight and increased awareness over what your clients might be experiencing. I also hope this serves as a reminder to explicitly check in on these things. Not sure how to do this with your clients? I hope you’ll reach out so we can brainstorm some ways.  

Wanna review this article further? Gotcha covered.

Hung, Miles, A., Trevino, Z., DAniello, C., Wood, H., Bishop, A., & Monshad, Z. (2023). BIPOC Experiences of Racial Trauma on TikTok: A Qualitative Content Analysis. Contemporary Family Therapy, 45(3), 298–308. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10591-023-09669-6