What Gun Violence Does to Our Mental Health
She thought she was fine. Others have it worse, she told herself. She wasn’t shot. She was only barricaded in a classroom for three hours. But ten years later, Columbine High School shooting survivor Heather Martin was still grappling with the fallout of witnessing the “horrific” aftermath. It had caused her to have recurring nightmares for years. She developed an eating disorder and begin experimenting with recreational drugs, which led her to drop out of college. At the 10thanniversary of the Columbine tragedy, she reconnected with classmates who were also struggling and began to understand the mental health toll the event had taken.
So it is with all mass shootings; as a New York Times article states, they have ripple effects that continue to resonate, even for those not physically present. Gun violence has devastating consequences for mental health, not only for those who experience a mass shooting but for the wider community as well.
The psychological effects of mass shootings on survivors, the families of victims, and those in the immediate location can be acute, ranging from post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, self-harm, and major depressive disorders. The closer the proximity to the violence, the greater the impact, but the aftershocks spread far and wide.
Erika Felix, an associate professor of clinical psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has studied survivors of shootings. She states that the mental health toll after gun violence is “felt everywhere.” Mass shooting events can engender feelings of fear, anger or helplessness. “It affects our perceptions of vulnerability and risk,” Dr. Felix explained. Studies have shown that even consuming news media after a tragedy can cause acute stress.
“We really have to look at this as a public mental health crisis,” she urged.
Dr. Sara Johnson, professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who has studied how chronic stress affects child development and behavior, explains how “deeply unsettling” it is that the shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas could have happened anywhere – in any town, in any school, to any of us.
Research backs her up. In 2018 a poll conducted for the American Psychological Association found that 75 percent of young people between 15 and 21 said that mass shootings were significant sources of stress for them.” A majority of adults aged 22-72 agreed.
For most, the trauma of living through a mass shooting creates stress responses that decrease over time. But others experience lasting consquences, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Nicole R. Nugent, an associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University’s medical school, is an expert on PTSD identification and treatment. PTSD can lead to difficulty sleeping. Survivors may become “emotionally numb, continuously on edge or easily startled,” she explained. “The world will often feel unsafe to them, and upsetting memories may intrude on their daily thoughts…. Teens and adults might turn to substance abuse.” Younger children may develop anxiety, stomachaches, or headaches, or may act out the trauma through play.
Pediatrician Dr. Aditi Vasan of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, noticing patients reporting depression, anxiety, and insomnia, decided to investigate how children and teens in her community were psychologically affected by nearby shootings. Her research discovered that Philadelphia youth “who lived within about four to six blocks of where a shooting had occurred were more likely than other children to use an emergency room for mental health reasons during the two months after the shooting.” The closer the proximity to the shooting, the worse the symptoms, which included “anxiety, panic attacks, suicidal ideation and self-harm behavior.”
Another study in Los Angeles looked at the effects of police killings on Black and Latino people in several communities. It found “decreases in high school students’ academic performance, learning deficiencies related to PTSD and higher levels of depression and school dropouts that correlated to how close students lived to where the shootings occurred.”
Mass shootings and gun violence tear at the social fabric. They damage mental health. They make youth and entire communities feel less safe, causing people to isolate themselves out of fear.
Experts stress that for those who have experienced trauma, the worst thing you can do in response is bottle it up. Treatment is available. Acknowledging that you are impacted is the first step.
Read the full article here.
Caron, Christina. “What Gun Violence Does to Our Mental Health.” The New York Times, 28 May 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/28/well/mind/gun-violence-mental-health.html.
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