Pandemic of homicide grief in global Black communities urgently needs a public health response

The Centre for Research and Innovation for Black Survivors of Homicide Victims (The CRIB) is calling for decisive action to address the grief from homicide that is disproportionately affecting Black communities worldwide—and to tackle the root causes of homicide that impact this population.

In a paper published in the journal Homicide Studies, University of Toronto social work professor Tanya Sharpe and colleagues argue that the prevalence and spread of homicide grief—the grief that follows the murder of a loved one—in Black communities throughout the global diaspora can be viewed as a pandemic. As with the inequitable spread of COVID-19, past and present structural racism and systemic inequalities underlie its pervasiveness.

“Homicide grief in Black communities in North America and beyond has reached pandemic proportions,” says Sharpe, Director of The CRIB and an Associate Professor at U of T’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. “A comprehensive public health framework that incorporates anti-Black racism is essential not only for addressing the trauma from this kind of loss, but also for reducing homicide rates.”

Recommendations for the framework encompass strategies both to prevent homicide and mitigate the impact of homicide grief. They include promoting research to understand how structural inequalities affect homicide rates, enhancing early detection of homicide grief and improving the availability of culturally responsive support services.

“Surviving family and friends often struggle to access quality mental health care and grief counseling, forcing Black communities to rely heavily on overburdened informal support systems to help cope with their grief,” says Sharpe, who holds the Factor-Inwentash Chair in Social Work in the Global Community.

Multiple studies show that about half of individuals who are bereaved due to homicide meet the criteria for prolonged grief disorder, which is characterized by persistent mental distress and associated with negative health outcomes that result in a higher risk of mortality from all causes. In addition, intergenerational and present-day trauma from experiences of racism and discriminatory social systems trigger prolonged homicide grief.

“The confluence of inequities that informs a generation of Black communities’ susceptibility to homicide grief is a crisis to every system, sector, and society. Thus, the urgency of a public health mandate must recognize the pandemic of homicide grief as a problem of society, not a disease of Black communities,” says Annette Bailey, an Associate Professor at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing, who co-authored the paper led by Sharpe, along with Monte-Angel Richardson, a Research Assistant with The CRIB.

Black individuals comprise only 4.3% of the Canadian population, yet the rate of homicide victims who identify as Black is four times higher than the rate for non-racialized individuals. In Toronto, the homicide victim rate is nearly 10 times higher for Black males. The situation is similar in the U.S., where research suggests that every Black American will experience the homicide of a loved one at least twice in their lifetime.

While there are some gaps in the race-based homicide data in Canada and most countries, the paper cites ample evidence for the sustained prevalence of homicide grief in Black communities.

“These stark statistics tell part of the story, but they don’t account for all those left behind,” says Sharpe. “It’s estimated that every homicide victim has at least seven to 10 surviving family members or friends grieving their death.”

The paper explores the impact of cumulative and constant exposure to death through personal experiences of the murder of family and friends, but also through frequent viewing of Black homicide in the media. “The frequency of homicide in Black communities creates a constant, pervasive threat to physical, mental and spiritual well-being and impedes grief recovery,” says Sharpe.

In advocating for a public health approach to this issue, she points to the increased recognition of anti-Black racism in the North American context. Canada is developing a Black Justice Strategy to respond to the systemic discrimination that has led to the overrepresentation of Black people in the criminal justice system, including as victims of crime, while the U.S. Surgeon General recently declared gun violence a national public health crisis, noting the disproportionate impact of this violence on Black Americans.

Sharpe is an advisory committee member of the U.S.-based Black & Brown Collective, a group of multidisciplinary researchers working to improve the efficacy of research, policy and practice that addresses safety and well-being in communities directly affected by violence.

Key statistics include:

• Twenty-five studies across the Organization for Economic Corporation and Development (OECD) and non-OECD countries revealed that roughly half of individuals bereaved due to homicide met the diagnostic criteria for prolonged homicide grief disorder.
• It is estimated that every homicide victim has at least 7 to 10 surviving family members or friends grieving their deaths. These numbers suggest that worldwide, in 2021, there were 4.58 million surviving family members and friends grieving the murder of 464,000 homicide victims—numbers that are expected to continue increasing into 2030.
• Research suggests that every Black American will experience the homicide of a loved one at least two times in their lifetime.
• In 2020–2021, homicide rates were eight times higher for Black American males and four times higher for Black American females than their white counterparts.
• Although Black Americans make up roughly 14% of the U.S. population, they account for more than half of gun homicide victims.
• In Canada, Black populations comprise only 4.3% of the Canadian population and yet the rate of homicide victims who identify as Black is four times higher than the rate for non-racialized people.
• The homicide victim rate is nearly 10 times higher for Black males in Toronto than for the whole Toronto population.