Surviving a school shooting: Impacts on the mental health, education, and earnings of American youth

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• Similarly, children exposed to shootings at schools may suffer more acutely than when they are exposed to violence in other settings because of their connection to student and teacher victims and the loss of trust in their schools’ ability to keep them safe.

• We compared the number of antidepressant prescriptions written by providers practicing within five miles of a school that experienced a shooting with those written by providers 10 to 15 miles away

• At the same time, some have argued that children are very resilient and can “bounce back” from trauma, implying that childhood violence exposure — while being damaging in the short run — may not have lasting effects (Agaibi and Wilson, 2005; Goldstein and Brooks, 2005; Garrett et al., 2019).

• document an increase in deaths (including suicides and accidents) among residents of Jefferson County, Colorado, who were between 14 and 18 at the time of the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School (which is located in that county).

• When it comes to educational outcomes, studies have found that school shootings lead to drops in student enrollment and a decline in average test scores

• While many students are physically unharmed, studies have consistently found consequences to their mental health, educational, and economic trajectories that last for years, and potentially decades, to come

• the average monthly number of antidepressant prescriptions written to youth under age 20 by providers located near schools that experienced a fatal shooting was 21.3 percent higher relative to providers located farther away in the two to three years following a shooting than in the two years before.

• Over the last two decades, the number of shootings at U.S. schools has doubled, and in my research with Marika Cabral, Bokyung Kim, Molly Schnell, and Hannes Schwandt, we estimate that more than 100,000 American children attended a school at which a shooting took place in 2018 and 2019 alone

• Research indicates a higher rate of antidepressant use among those exposed to a school shooting in the years following the gun violence.

• at least 185 children, educators, and others have been killed by gun violence at American schools since the Columbine massacre in 1999,

• Also, compared with violence in other contexts, school shootings are likely to cause a greater amount of disruption to student learning, as they might affect teacher turnover rates, teaching quality, classroom resources, and the continuity of instruction.

• Lastly, given that “peer effects” in schools are important — i.e., students’ learning and well-being are highly influenced by what their peers do in the classroom setting — the adverse impacts of a student’s own trauma from experiencing a school shooting may be amplified due to disruptions from other shooting-exposed peers (Carrell et al., 2018).

• astly, given that “peer effects” in schools are important — i.e., students’ learning and well-being are highly influenced by what their peers do in the classroom setting — the adverse impacts of a student’s own trauma from experiencing a school shooting may be amplified due to disruptions from other shooting-exposed peers

• We found that students who were exposed to a shooting at their school in grades 10 and 11 were 3.7 percent at the mean less likely to graduate from high school; 9.5 percent less likely to enroll in any college; 17.2 percent less likely to enroll in a four-year college; and 15.3 percent less likely to obtain a bachelor's degree by age 26.

• In fact, 18 of the 33 shootings had no fatalities, and no shootings had more than one death. And yet, our research indicates that these less deadly and mostly unpublicized acts of gun violence at schools have major and long-lasting consequences for many children who were on school grounds when they occurred.

• It is impossible to overstate the devastation caused by the lives lost to school shootings. But research indicates that even those who escape these events without any visible physical harm carry scars that could impair their lives for many years to come.

• In comparison, we are not aware of governmental responses to the school shootings that we studied, and we did not find any changes in observable mental health resources to support students (e.g., as measured by the number of social support staff) at the school level.

• an increasing body of research shows that the death toll captures only one part of the broader lasting impact that gun violence at schools

• Uvalde massacre

• In brief, such trauma can affect both the biological stress system as well as young developing brains