Racial trauma and its health impacts in Black people in the United States and Canada: a scoping review on conceptualizations, definitions and manifestations

TL;DR

This review explores how racial trauma is defined and affects the health of Black people in the U.S. and Canada.

Contribution

The paper provides a comprehensive scoping review of racial trauma conceptualizations and health impacts in Black communities.

Findings

Racial trauma is described using varied terminology and arises from both direct and indirect exposure to racism.

Racial trauma causes multidimensional harm and may be transmitted intergenerationally.

The review identifies psychological, physiological, social, and community-level impacts of racial trauma.

Abstract

Despite growing recognition of racism as a public health crisis, racial trauma remains inconsistently defined and under researched. This scoping review investigates how racial trauma is conceptualized in empirical literature, focusing on its manifestations and long-term health impacts among Black individuals and communities in the United States and Canada. Guided by the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for conducting scoping reviews, we systematically searched ten multidisciplinary databases and identified 29 empirical studies published between 2000 and 2025. Most included studies were conducted in the United States of America, with only two studies that included Canadian participants. We find that racial trauma is described using varied terminology, such as race-based traumatic stress or race-related stress and arises from both direct and indirect exposure to racism. While some manifestations resemble post-traumatic stress disorder, racial trauma is a distinct trauma phenomenon shaped by chronic, cumulative, and systemic racism. It causes multidimensional harm, is experienced both individually and collectively, and may be transmitted intergenerationally even to neonates. This review identifies psychological, physiological, social and community-level impacts. These findings underscore the need for a unified conceptual framework, formal recognition of racial trauma in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR) and increased empirical research across contexts including in Canada. These findings have important implications for mental health policy and clinical practice, highlighting the need for culturally responsive frameworks that address the unique experiences of racial trauma among Black communities.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-025-25382-5.

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