Caswick Naverro has seen some things in his 21 years: dozens of funerals of friends and family members who were shot, drugs, a childhood marked by poverty and a sick mother. And in his New Orleans community, he isn’t the only one.
We often associate Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) with soldiers returning from war. But rarely do we talk about the impact of trauma on communities struggling with violence right here in the US. But it’s real: In one of a handful of federally funded studies on the subject, researchers in Atlanta interviewed more than 8,000 urban residents, mostly young and black, and nearly a third of respondents experienced symptoms consistent with PTSD. That rate is comparable to that of combat veterans who fought in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan.
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Reporter Jimmie Briggs spent months following Naverro, tracing the epidemic of PTSD that afflicts men of color surviving in neighborhoods where guns and drugs create daily trauma for VICE magazine’s latest issue. At a time when the entire country is talking about gun control, we talked about the stories that often get left out of the headlines.
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