Does gun violence affect the mental health of children in the United States? This question has the same answer as most questions about child and adolescent development. Simple causation rarely applies equally to all children, and the same exposure can even have opposite effects in different children. It is the essential truth of the “ecological perspective”. But looking at the impact of gun violence on the mental health of young people from this perspective highlights two of the many problems facing American society. It is the traumatic reaction of children directly exposed to gun violence and the contamination of the consciousness of young people, especially those with severe mental illness. health problems.

Witnessing gun violence is clearly traumatic and can lead first to acute stress reactions and then to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).But the bigger, more socially significant story is post-traumatic stress development: How do children and young people grow up after experiencing trauma? Not surprisingly, the answer is the same.

In perhaps 85-90% of cases, the mental health sequelae of a single traumatic event usually resolve within a year. This is good news for children, for whom gun violence is a terrifying anomaly and a terribly bad day in a generally safe and supportive life. A small percentage of children and adolescents who do tend to be people whose lives have been disrupted before. Many, if not most, of these single gun violence incidents are front-page shootings and, of course, massive numbers as images of murder accumulate in social media-fed consciousness. However, these incidents do not account for most of the direct trauma of gun violence experienced by children and young people in the United States. It occurs in a subset and is often a regular feature of daily life, not a single acute trauma but a chronic trauma from multiple incidents.

In my 30 years as a psychometric witness in homicide cases, I have seen firsthand the challenges faced by chronically traumatized young people. They differ from children and adolescents, who have only had one bad day due to gun violence and are usually inundated with “psychological first aid” and therapeutic interventions. Young people living in “war zone” areas rarely receive substantive mental health support (most essentially trauma-based psychotherapy) due to the development of post-traumatic stress. . They are mostly left alone and do not rely on ‘comfort treatments’. I often ask young men I’ve interviewed in prisons and jails how many 8-year-olds they would estimate to have witnessed a shooting. A typical response is, “All? Many? 80%?” However, the actual percentage is he’s around 10%.

Adolescents, where such exposures are the norm, can develop a range of problems from both experiencing and normalizing trauma associated with gun violence. In their 1999 analysis of trauma outcomes, Solomon and Heide found that, beyond ‘normal’ PTSD, chronic trauma was associated with ‘poor self-esteem/self-concept’, ‘interpersonal mistrust’, ‘feelings of shame’, and ‘feelings of shame’. Reported to create addiction.¹ These are important developmental problems in their own right.but i found that For other chronic trauma (Including domestic child abuse) Although it occurs in the context of community violence, it also presents a much more dangerous symptom: the development of a ‘war zone mentality’.

Researchers like Sampson report finding resilience and even thriving in poor and marginalized communities in cities like Chicago.² In a Chicago study conducted by Bell and Jenkins, 63% of elementary school students reported witnessing a shooting in an area where community violence was high.³ In other words, their exposure levels were similar to those of Lebanese and Palestinian children during the peak period of political violence in the West Bank and Gaza. Such exposure creates a worldview in which community violence is normal. However, this normalization can lead to validation of threat hypersensitivity and preemptive strikes. This is what I call the war zone mentality.

Through this process, traumatized young people (mostly boys) become ‘child soldiers’. The larger contexts in their communities, such as poverty, racism, cultural support for extreme corporal punishment (children’s beatings), and history of armed street gangs, disproportionately increase their propensity to commit gun violence themselves. They may be drawn to gangs to compensate for the ‘poor self-esteem/self-concept’, ‘mistrust’, ‘feelings of shame’ and ‘dependence’ resulting from untreated chronic trauma. Often. Moreover, they are disproportionately likely to face these socially toxic communities without the benefit of strong, positive male role models, and are drawn to gangs because they sought family acceptance. They often report (to me and others) that they have been robbed. I found it missing at home. “Until he was 14, he had never met anyone who had a father at home,” said one young man incarcerated for murder.

Givani’s 2018 analysis of violent and socially dissatisfied behavior in marginalized communities around the world found that in areas where fathers were commonly absent, boys were less likely to be socially active in their environment. There is an increased risk of exposure to the toxic effects of^Four Gun violence trauma is pivotal to the developmental pathways that lead to gun violence in the next generation.

Concerning the pollution of consciousness, I had the opportunity to speak with one actual school shooter and two suspected mass shooters. I believe that these psychologically and socially vulnerable boys have used media-provided scripts of other school shootings, particularly his 1999 Columbine, Colorado, mass shooting. I was impressed with how I was informed by They studied Columbine as a sort of primer on what to do when you’re a troubled, angry, sad teenage boy in a country where deadly weapons are at your fingertips. They are not alone.

Teenagers are particularly vulnerable to what is called the “audience effect.” Adolescents tend to see themselves as if they were in a play and their peers were spectators (or sometimes fellow actors). This phenomenon predates internet-based social media, but is now excruciatingly evident, as many mass murderers post before they kill. Such “murder leaks” have long been seen in young killers. It’s part of the show — the quintessential American show. In those troubled minds of adolescence, if anger and sadness are the problem, gun violence is the answer.

Anthropological research has revealed the seriousness of this problem. People diagnosed with schizophrenia are generally less violent than other Americans and, in fact, are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. A three-country study of the content of people’s auditory hallucinations found that in the United States, violent imagery permeates the thoughts of people considered “disconnected from reality.”^Five In Ghana, hearing a voice is often perceived as having a positive conversation with God, and in India, the voice is often used to respond to the listener’s housework style (“Clean the house!”). was critical. 70% of the voices heard by participants in the US said to hurt themselves or others, compared to only 20% in India and 10% in Ghana. So even people normally considered disconnected from reality may be “infected” with America’s culture of violence.

The United States, of course, is rife not only with violent images, but also with the means of transforming those images into bloody realities. The physical, cultural and social availability of lethal weapons provided a way to carry out the most violent orders. Twenty-five years ago, I asked her group of 10-year-olds in the suburbs if they could get a gun “if needed,” and nearly everyone said yes. they still can.

The impact of gun violence on America’s youth is multifaceted, but as someone who has worked with hundreds of gun violence victims and perpetrators, I’m particularly concerned about these two aspects.