War-Zone Mentality – Mental Health Consequences of Gun Violence in American Children and Adolescents

Does gun violence affect the mental health of America’s children? That question has the same answer as most questions about child and adolescent development: it depends. Rarely does a simple cause-effect relationship apply to all children to the same degree, and the same exposures may even have opposite effects on different children. Such flexibility is an important truth about the “ecological perspective” of children and adolescents. But from this point of view, considering the impact of gun violence on youth mental health highlights two issues that confront American society: the traumatic reactions of children directly exposed to gun violence and the contamination of youth consciousness, especially by serious mental health problems.

Witnessing gun violence is clearly traumatic and can initially lead to an acute stress reaction and then to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But the biggest and most socially significant story is post-traumatic stress disorder DevelopmentHow do children and adolescents grow in trauma? Not surprisingly, the answer is the same: it depends.

In perhaps 85 to 90 percent of cases, mental health sequelae resolve after a traumatic event, typically within a year. That’s good news for kids who have had the worst day in a generally safe and supportive life, the tragedy of gun violence. Young children or teenagers who suffer long-term damage from a traumatic attack have already had their lives disrupted. Many, if not all, of these single incidents of gun violence are front-page shootings, and of course they can indirectly traumatize many young people, as images of the killings accumulate in their social media feeds. But these incidents are not directly responsible for the majority of gun violence injuries to US children and adolescents. This violence occurs in a subset of neighborhoods, often becoming a regular feature of daily life—a chronic trauma that occurs more often than a single, acute trauma.

In my 30 years of serving as a psychological expert witness in homicide cases, I have seen the challenges faced by such chronically traumatized youth. Unlike children and teens who have just had a bad day because of gun violence, they are inundated with “psychological first aid” and medical intervention. Youth in “war-zone” neighborhoods do not receive substantial mental health support — most importantly, trauma-informed psychotherapy — for their post-traumatic stress disorder development. They are mostly left on their own, and any “reassuring treatment” is not credible: “It’s a problem, things are back to normal” doesn’t help, because it’s a “normal” problem. I often ask the young people I interview in prisons and jails how many 8-year-olds have they seen shot; A typical response is “All? Most? 80%?” Although the actual percentage is more than 10%.

Youth for whom such exposure is normalized may experience a variety of problems, ranging from experiencing and adjusting to the trauma associated with gun violence. In their 1999 analysis of trauma outcomes, Solomon and Heide reported that beyond “normal” PTSD, chronic trauma causes “self-esteem/self-concept,” “interpersonal insecurity,” “shame,” and “dependence.”¹ These are significant development issues in themselves. But I got that When others are chronically injured (including child abuse in the home) Occurring in situations of social unrest, it also offers more ominous symptoms: the development of a “war zone mentality.”

Although researchers such as Sampson report resilience and even “thriving” in poor and marginalized communities in cities such as Chicago.² A study by Bell and Jenkins in Chicago found that 63% of elementary school children in neighborhoods with high rates of community violence reported witnessing a shooting.³ Their level of vulnerability, in other words, was similar to that of Lebanese and Palestinian children during the intense political violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip – so these American settlements were seen as war zones. Such extreme exposure results in a worldview that is prone to societal violence. But this normalization is a justification for vulnerability and preemptive attack—what I call war-zone thinking.

In this process, traumatized youth (mostly boys) become “child soldiers.” The larger context of their communities, including poverty, racism, cultural support for severe corporal punishment (beating children), and a history of armed street gangs, makes them disproportionately more likely to engage in gun violence themselves. They are often drawn to gangs, at least in part to compensate for untreated chronic trauma of “low self-esteem/self-esteem,” “interpersonal insecurity,” “shame,” and “dependence.” What’s more, without these strong, positive male role models, these socially toxic communities are disproportionately likely to face, and often (for me and others) report being taken to gangs. Found a shortage at home. “Until I was 14, I never met a single person who had a stay-at-home father,” a young man in prison for murder told me.

In a 2018 report on violence and social problems in marginalized communities around the world, Givani concluded, “where fathers are largely absent, boys are more vulnerable to any social toxic influences in their environment.”⁴ Gun-violence trauma is critical to the developmental path to the next generation of gun violence.

Regarding the contamination of consciousness, I have had the opportunity to speak with one actual and two school shooters. I wonder how these psychologically and socially vulnerable boys are informed by the media’s scripts of other school shootings – especially the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in Colorado. do it. They are not alone.

Teenagers are especially vulnerable to something called the “audience effect”: teenagers tend to see themselves as part of a play and their peers as spectators (or sometimes co-actors). This phenomenon predates internet-based social media, but it’s incredibly obvious today, as many mass murderers now post before they kill. This kind of “murder” has been seen by young murderers for a long time. It’s part of the show – the American show so important. In the troubled minds of these teenagers, if anger and grief are the question, gun violence is the answer.

Anthropological research explains the gravity of this problem. People with schizophrenia are generally less violent than other Americans, and in fact, they are more likely to be victims than perpetrators. However, a three-country study of the content of auditory hallucinations among people diagnosed with schizophrenia found that in the United States, images of violence work in the imagination of people who are considered “unrealistic.”⁵ In Ghana, hearing voices was often considered a positive conversation with God, and in India the voices criticized the hearer’s housekeeping style (“Clean your house!”). 70% of the voices heard by the American participants told them to harm themselves or others, while only 20% in India and Ghana only 10%. Thus, even people who are normally considered unrealistic can be “contaminated” by America’s culture of violence.

Of course, the United States is filled not only with images of violence, but also with the means to translate those images into bloody realities. The physical, cultural, and social presence of lethal weapons provides the means to implement extremely powerful coercive conditions. Twenty-five years ago, I asked suburban 10-year-olds if they could get a gun if they “wanted,” and almost all of them said yes. You still can.

The impact of gun violence on youth in the United States is multifaceted, but as someone who has interacted with hundreds of teenage victims and perpetrators of gun violence, I find these two aspects particularly troubling.