What Mass Shootings Are Doing to Our Mental Health

Yesterday’s news about another school shooting, this time in Tennessee, was all too familiar. Mass shootings are taking a toll – not only on those who survive them, but on all Americans. An article by the American Psychological Association details how the “ongoing backdrop of violence” is not only making adults feel less safe but “is steadily eroding the sense of well-being, safety, and efficacy known to be essential for healthy development for young people.”

Mass shootings are affecting young people

According to a 2018 Pew Research poll, a majority of teens (57%) now say they worry about a shooting happening at their school.

Erika Felix, PhD, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, notes “these tragedies are happening far too often, and the result is that many young people are feeling this constant back-of-the-mind stress.” She says that the young people she treats as a clinical psychologist “are on high alert, constantly planning their escape route if violence breaks out in public.”

Young people are becoming increasingly inured to the prospect of mass violence, as many have never known a world without active shooter drills at school.

Mass shootings are harming everyone’s mental health

“Experts say the frequency of mass shootings, amplified by our near-constant access to media coverage of such events, amounts to an accumulation of exposure that is harming everyone’s mental health,” the article explains.

• In the Pew Research poll 63% of parents expressed worry about a mass shooting at their child’s school.
• One third of adults say they now avoid certain places and events as a result of mass shootings
• Although mass shootings account for about 1% of annual firearm deaths in the United States, they loom large in the public consciousness.

“These events are still relatively rare, but it doesn’t feel that way,” explained school psychologist Franci Crepeau-Hobson, Ph.D., an associate professor and director of clinical training at the University of Colorado Denver’s School of Education and Human Development. “I think that everybody’s sense of security has been threatened.”

The cumulative effect of these events is damaging. “The more catastrophic events we’re exposed to as a nation, the more impacted we’re going to be on a psychological level,” said Jonathan S. Comer, Ph.D., a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Florida International University.

The fallout radius of mass shootings

Just as the frequency of mass shooting events matters, so does proximity to them. The closer you are in physical proximity to a mass shooting, the more you are affected – and the greater the risk of mental health problems. One research study of “44 school shootings found that antidepressant use increased more than 20% among young people who lived within 5 miles of a shooting, versus those who lived 10 to 15 miles away.”

Similarly, the closer you feel to the victims of a mass shooting event, the more it affects you. “Psychological proximity—the degree to which we relate to another person or an event—also increases the risk for PTS symptoms,” the article explains. “Oftentimes, the more one identifies with the victims, the more difficulty they have in the aftermath of an event like this,” said Comer.

The numbing effect of mass violence

Why do some of us go numb in the face of incidents of mass violence? Cognitive psychologists are studying this phenomenon. Paul Slovic, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, and his colleagues call it the “deadly arithmetic of compassion” – frequently, “the more people who die in an incident of mass violence, the less we care.”

Their research has found that people’s compassionate concern for victims of violence “don’t respond well to statistics and don’t scale up” – in other words, “the horror people felt when 19 children and two adults were shot and killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, isn’t 21 times greater than what people feel when one child is murdered.” This tamping down of emotion is known as “psychic numbing.”

Similarly, “people often have a false sense of inefficacy in the face of very large problems, which can lead to inaction and disengagement.” In other words, the bigger a problem, the more likely people are to give up in the face of it.  When study participants were shown statistics about the magnitude of the hunger crisis in Africa, they gave half as much money as those shown a single child suffering from malnutrition.

“If we believe there’s a problem that we can’t do anything about, it makes sense that we don’t attend to it, because it’s very distressing to dwell on things you can’t fix,” explained Slovic.

Attention is a critical resource

“Our mind deceives us into underreacting to the most important problems in the world, including mass violence,” Slovic said.  “But when one of these events occurs, we do have a window of opportunity when people are awake, emotionally engaged, and motivated for action.”

When we don’t see societal progress after a mass shooting event, it is difficult to sustain attention, as our memories fade and emotions subside. Nationwide surveys have found that support for gun legislation spikes in the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting but fades within a few weeks.

What can be done about gun violence

Since this slide in attention is real, Slovic asserts that it’s important to stay engaged and not to let a false sense of hopelessness prevent us from taking positive steps forward.

Surveys show that a majority of Americans – even gun owners – support stricter gun laws, but progress on that front may be slow, one step at a time. “Just because we can’t fix a problem in its entirety doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do what we can do to make a difference,” he said. “We cannot afford to let our minds deceive us into underreacting.”

Read the full article here.

 

Abrams, Zara. “Stress of mass shootings causing a cascade of collective trauma.” APA.com, 11 July 2022, https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/09/news-mass-shootings-collective-traumas?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=apa-monitor&utm_content=mass-shootings-collective-trauma.

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