September 15, 2024

Scholars’ Circle – Causes of violence in schools; Psychological impacts of school shootings – September 15, 2024

58 minutes

School shootings have sadly become a part of American life over the last two decades. From the 2000–01 to 2021–22 school years, there were 1,375 school shootings at public and private elementary and secondary schools, resulting in 515 deaths and 1,161 injuries. What are the causes of all of this violence? What are the best ways to address this epidemic of violence, and stop these shootings? How effective is citing parents as liable and even bringing charges against them when children shoot other children? [ dur: 34mins. ]

Ron Avi Astor holds the Marjorie Crump Chair Professorship in Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs with a joint appointment in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. He is the co-author of Bullying, School Violence and Climate in Evolving Context and An eighteen‑year longitudinal examination of school victimization and weapon use in California secondary schools.

Mass shootings in the Unites States are unprecedented in advanced industrial democracies. We explore the psychological impact of these shootings on the survivors and witnesses, with a particular attention to the children who experience this trauma. What are effective actions to confront the traumas experienced by the children who survive school shootings? Overwhelming the response of mass shootings is to “do something.” But what should we as a society and as an electorate do in response to these mass shootings? [ dur: 24mins. ].

This is an excerpt from our June 2022 interview. Listen to the complete interview visit here.

Karla Vermeulen is the Deputy Director of the Institute for Disaster Mental Health and an Associate Professor of Psychology at SUNY New Paltz.She is the author of Generation Disaster: Coming of Age Post-9/11 and co-editor of Disaster Mental Health Case Studies: Lessons Learned from Counseling in Chaos.

Robin Gurwitch is a Professor in the Duke University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and is Senior Advisor for the Terrorism and Disaster Program of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. She is the co-author of Children in Disasters and Trauma-Directed Interaction (TDI): An Adaptation to Parent-Child Interaction Therapy for Families with a History of Trauma. Resource – National Child Traumatic Stress Network – Talking to children about shooting.

Heather Littleton is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Colorado, at Colorado Springs, and Research Director at the Lyda Hill Institute for Human Resilience. She is the co-author of “PTSD near and far: Symptom networks from two to 12 months after the Virginia Tech campus shootings.” And “Can people benefit from acute stress? Social support, psychological improvement, and resilience after the Virginia Tech campus shootings” as well as numerous publications on sexual violence and the trauma of the LGBTQI+ community.

More resources are available at:

https://www.newpaltz.edu/idmh/

https://www.nctsn.org/resources/talking-children-about-shooting

This program is produced by Ankine Aghassian, Doug Becker and Sudd Dongre.

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