The police officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck has been convicted of second-degree murder. However, that conviction will not bring Floyd back to life. It is also extremely troubling that several other Black men and women have died similar traumatic deaths since Floyd struggled to tell the world “I can’t breathe” while calling out for his mother with his last breath on a Minneapolis street on May 25, 2020. On Tuesday, one year after Floyd’s untimely and unsettling death, The Kennedy Satcher Center for Mental Health Equity at Morehouse School of Medicine, The National Alliance on Mental Illness, and Hurdle hosted a virtual symposium to discuss Black mental health. Before George Floyd’s death, mental health was often a hushed and shunned topic in the Black community. That sentiment is an ongoing struggle after Floyd’s death, mental health advocates said. Participants in the symposium included Dan Gillison, CEO of the National Alliance of Mental Illness, former U.S. Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, Dr. David Satcher, the 16th U.S. Surgeon General, and mental health researchers Dr. Harold Neighbors and Dr. Norman L. Day-Vines. Neighbors and Day-Vines shared observations from their co-authored George Floyd Report, which focused on mental health and the subsequent trauma in the Black community.
