Author: Sujata Gupta / Source: Science News
In March, three people connected to mass school shootings died by suicide, raising questions about the lingering effects of such trauma on a person’s mental health.
Two teenagers who survived the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., took their own lives within days of each other. The father of a child killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., died by suicide a few days later.
Suicide can occur in clusters, especially among teens. But it’s too early to tell if these deaths are connected in any way, are related to having experienced similar mass traumas — or if they simply occurred close together by chance, says April Foreman. A psychologist in Baton Rouge, La., and board member of the American Association of Suicidology, Foreman is familiar with all three suicides. “These are really complicated events,” she says. (One thing they aren’t, some researchers say, is contagious; a person can’t catch suicide like a common cold.)
But the deaths do shine light on a question that researchers are trying hard to answer: How does being connected to a mass trauma event like a school shooting affect a person’s later risk for mental health problems and self-harm?
Here’s what scientists know — and don’t know.
Who is most at risk for developing mental health problems following a mass shooting?
What little is known about mental health problems following mass shootings largely stems from research efforts launched on college campuses where such shootings have occurred.
In 2008, a gunman opened fire at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, killing five students and wounding 21 before taking his own life. By chance, researchers had already established a study there with women enrolled in an introductory psychology course to look at mental health problems related to sexual abuse.
Of 691 surveyed, about 42 percent experienced some symptoms of post-traumatic stress shortly after the shooting, according to a 2014 study in Behavior Therapy. That included feeling numb and disconnected and having trouble regulating emotions. In a follow-up survey more than eight months after the shooting with 588 of those women, those still experiencing symptoms had dropped to about 12 percent.
Exposure to previous trauma predicted a person’s likelihood of developing PTSD, the researchers found. Other studies have shown that preexisting depression and proximity — both physical closeness to the actual shooting and emotional closeness to victims — raise the risk of experiencing ongoing psychological problems.
Who is most at risk for self-harm, including suicide?
Most people who survive extreme trauma, whether that’s a mass shooting or some other abuse, don’t kill themselves, experts say. But exposure to violence does seem to increase suicidal thinking and, for some, the ability to act on those plans.
“When you’re exposed to that kind of violent loss, it breaks past that little barrier that most of us have that says ‘This isn’t how the world works’ or that life is sacred, ” says Amy Mezulis, an adolescent clinical psychologist at Seattle Pacific University.
Since the mid-2000s, suicide researchers have been looking at the factors that shift a person from thinking about suicide to actually carrying out the act (SN: 7/7/18, p. 12). One idea, dubbed the three-step theory, suggests…
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