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Mental health expert weighs in on George Floyd video sparking outrage nationwide
FOX 29's Marcus Espinoza talks to a mental health expert on the impact and emotions people may have after watching the video of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
PHILADELPHIA - If the small amount of footage you’ve just seen of George Floyd’s arrest, loss of consciousness, and eventual death in a Minneapolis hospital upsets you deeply, you are not alone. A local mental health expert is weighing in on a video sparking outrage all over the county.
“It is triggering. It is overwhelming and a lot of people just don’t want to have to see it because it is what they live," Dr. George James, licensed marriage and family therapist, said.
The death of George Floyd has sparked nationwide debate, protests, and even riots.
Dr. James says this video for many brings raw emotions to the surface.
“What you’re experiencing is real and that it’s okay to experience those things and then find ways to deal with it, from conversation, from dialogue, from things where people might feel powerless and helping them figure out what power they do have,” he added.
It begs the question do people need to watch this video to feel and understand the trauma? Dr. James agrees not everyone needs to see it to know it but that it still should exist
“I think the challenges is that there are still some people who will continue to say that this is not real and so if if the video is not real and what happened is not real then the experiences of people are not real. And so, sometimes the only way that people acknowledge something is real is when they see it," he said.
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- 'Crying all day': Couple who employed George Floyd mourns his death
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