"As a community psychologist, I've seen firsthand the importance of mental health promotion efforts that have nothing to do with counseling per se, but that help the community heal together," says University of California, Santa Barbara, assistant psychology professor Erika Felix, PhD, who led the study. These events included a candlelight vigil the night after the tragedy and a memorial "paddle-out," where thousands of the community's surfers joined together in the ocean to remember the victims of the event. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy Memorial events-particularly those that are student and community initiated and led-are most helpful to survivors in terms of recovering after a mass violence event, suggests a study conducted after a murderer opened fire, stabbed passersby and then rammed his car into a crowd near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2014, killing six people and wounding 14 others ( What's critical, psychologists' research suggests, is to ensure that victims feel connected to their communities in the aftermath of mass violence and that they have ongoing support available to them.
A study led by former Northern Illinois University (NIU) graduate student Lynsey Miron, PhD, after the 2008 shootings on NIU's campus, found that although a large percentage of mass shooting survivors were either resilient or displayed only short-term stress reactions, about 12 percent reported persistent PTSD, a number that's higher than the average prevalence of PTSD among trauma survivors as a whole ( Behavior Therapy Research also suggests that mass shooting survivors may be at greater risk for mental health difficulties compared with people who experience other types of trauma, such as natural disasters. The National Center for PTSD estimates that 28 percent of people who have witnessed a mass shooting develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and about a third develop acute stress disorder. But others-particularly those who believed their lives or those of their loved ones were in danger or who lack social support-experience ongoing mental health problems, including post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety and substance abuse. "Simply by definition, mass shootings are more likely to trigger difficulties with beliefs that most of us have, including that we live in a just world and that if we make good decisions, we'll be safe," says Laura Wilson, PhD, co-author and editor of "The Wiley Handbook of the Psychology of Mass Shootings" and an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
These survivors come from nearly every race, religion and socioeconomic background, living otherwise normal lives in Parkland, Florida Aurora, Colorado or the scores of other towns whose names have become etched in our minds.Īlthough mass shootings account for only a tiny fraction of the country's gun deaths, they are uniquely disturbing because they happen without warning in the most routine of places: schools, churches, office buildings and concert venues. Thousands more have been injured-both physically and psychologically.
Since 1966, 1,102 Americans have been killed in mass shootings, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.
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