Police violence is a well-documented contributor to racial disparities in health, with policing operating as a chronic stressor in Black communities. Emerging evidence links policing with suicide risk among Black adults. The present study builds on this work by examining associations between anticipatory stress of police violence and suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STB), and explores whether these associations differ by sex using data from a nationally representative survey of 3,015 self-identified US Black adults conducted in 2023. Survey-weighted regression analyses reveal that anticipatory stress of police violence is significantly associated with past-year (OR = 1.32) and lifetime (OR = 1.46) suicidal thoughts, after controlling for other risk factors, including anticipatory stress of interpersonal violence, lifetime gun violence exposure, and relevant demographic characteristics. Sex-stratified analyses show these associations are significant among women but not men, suggesting the importance of intersectional approaches that move beyond Black cisgender men’s experiences as the reference case of police harm.
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Burke et al. (2026) studied this question.
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