{"id":32137,"date":"2022-05-26T15:46:36","date_gmt":"2022-05-26T15:46:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/?p=32137"},"modified":"2022-05-26T15:46:36","modified_gmt":"2022-05-26T15:46:36","slug":"mass-violence-takes-toll-on-americans-psyches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/2022\/05\/26\/mass-violence-takes-toll-on-americans-psyches\/","title":{"rendered":"Mass violence takes toll on Americans\u2019 psyches"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When the American Psychological Association surveyed more than 2,000 people about their stress levels just days after back-to-back mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, in 2019, the findings laid out the toll of seemingly ceaseless, random violence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A third of the respondents said they would no longer go to certain public places<\/a> for fear of becoming a casualty of a mass shooting. Almost as many said they could not go anywhere without worrying about being shot. Twenty-four percent said they had made changes in their lives due to their fear of a mass shooting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Sixty-two percent of parents said they lived in fear of their children becoming victims of a mass shooting, and 71 percent said the possibility of mass violence was adding stress to their lives.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The assaults on Americans\u2019 psyches have only intensified <\/b>since then, with a two-year-plus pandemic that has taken 1 million U.S. lives; street battles in the struggle for racial justice; <\/b>a war in Ukraine that has renewed fears of a nuclear conflict; a roller-coaster economy; an insurrectionist riot at the U.S. Capitol; visibly worsening effects of climate change and many more mass shootings. Those culminated in the massacre Tuesday of 19 children and two adults in a Uvalde, Tex. elementary school, just 10 days after the slaughter of 10 African Americans in a Buffalo supermarket<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Experts say the unrelenting developments are taking a toll on our mental and physical health and how we interact as a society. The targeting of churches and schools has been particularly distressing to many people who have long regarded them as safe spaces from the tumult of the world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cPeople are emotionally exhausted,\u201d said Roxane Cohen Silver, a University of California at Irvine psychologist who has studied trauma for decades. \u201cWe cannot see any one of these events in isolation. We are seeing a cascade of collective traumas. \u2026 I don\u2019t think that many people could have conceived of this degree of loss.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The impact is felt most deeply by communities already under stress. \u201cIt takes a toll on the country as a whole and an even higher toll on people of color, who are largely the victims of these last two incidents,\u201d said the Rev. Ray Hammond, pastor at Bethel AME Church in Boston, who has worked on anti-violence initiatives for decades.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cEven though intellectually you know this is a rare thing, the sense of insecurity is cumulative, and I think for a lot of people extremely unsettling.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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America\u2019s new norm: \u2018Why are we willing to live with this carnage?\u2019<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The notion that people of color feel more vulnerable is supported by the APA survey, which was incorporated into the organization\u2019s annual Stress in America report.<\/a> Hispanics, Blacks, Asians and Native Americans all reported more stress from mass shootings than Whites.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A Quinnipiac University poll <\/a>and a Pew Research Center survey<\/a>, both taken in 2018 after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., showed the same results, with Blacks and Hispanics more fearful of mass violence than Whites, and younger people more worried than older respondents.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Tuesday\u2019s rampage brought an extra measure of anguish to a nation that saw the faces of children such as 10-year-old Amerie Jo Garza, smiling proudly with her Honor Roll certificate just hours before she was murdered by a gunman with an assault rifle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The surveys, experts said, affirm their belief that repeated exposure to shocking acts of violence that happen with horrific regularity in this country, alone among its peers, <\/b>is affecting people\u2019s health.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s clearly having a significant negative impact, and particularly on our mental and our physical health,\u201d said Vaile Wright, senior director for health-care innovation at the APA, who works on the Stress in America surveys that have been conducted each year since 2007.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When acts of mass violence \u201care repeated in this way, they start to feel more and more overwhelming, and a sense of hopelessness starts to set in,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Human bodies are not meant to be so frequently in a state of agitation, she said. The result is hyper-vigilance, anxiety and an inability \u201cto be in the moment.\u201d Some people may become desensitized to violence as a defense, she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cPeople feel so overwhelmed by the stress and worry that they have to compartmentalize it to a certain extent,\u201d Wright said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Joshua Morganstein, a psychiatrist and chair of the American Psychiatric Association\u2019s Committee on Psychiatric Dimensions of Disaster, noted that schools are considered safe places, as are houses of worship \u2014 both of which have been attacked in mass shootings in recent years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When these places are struck by violence it is particularly distressing, he said. And the deaths of children in violent acts adds another layer of horror: \u201cIt also challenges our perception and belief about the natural order of life in the world, which is that parents are supposed to precede their children in death, not the other way around,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Morganstein suggested that people monitor their consumption of news about horrific events such as the Uvalde shooting. It is not being callous to turn off the news, he said \u2014 it can be necessary for mental health.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe media is such an important source of information for us, but we know that exposure to disaster-related media is consistently associated with feelings of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress symptoms, trouble sleeping, increased use of alcohol and tobacco,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Silver, the California psychologist, studied the health consequences of exposure to news about the 9\/ 11 attacks and the Iraq War, and found evidence that suggests some people developed new cardiovascular illnesses as a result. She is now studying the psychological and physical health consequences of this \u201congoing onslaught\u201d of bad news on our sense of safety.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Previous research on collective trauma shows that some people can develop conditions that include short-term anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental health issues.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And those <\/b>exposed to multiple tragedies tend to have \u201cgreater distress, functional impairment and lower life satisfaction,\u201d according to a 2020 commentary Silver published in Nature Human Behavior, based on numerous studies. The bad news is amplified by rapid dissemination on social media and repetition through the 24-hour news cycle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe are not only seeing or hearing the news of these tragedies, but we are seeing that in graphic color,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In addition to reducing news consumption, experts advised focusing on what you can control rather than worrying about what might happen, and to put upsetting information <\/b>into a broader context.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mass shootings that kill four or more people account for less than 1 percent of the roughly 20,000 firearm homicides in the United States each year, according to Jillian Peterson, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn. Suicides by firearms make up about 60 percent of all gun deaths each year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe most dangerous thing you will do today is ride in a car,\u201d said Joel Dvoskin, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. \u201cAnd in fact we\u2019ve made that safer.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But Beverly Kingston, director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado, said society is only now beginning to ask \u201chow do we heal collective trauma? How do we acknowledge our society is built on top of layers of trauma?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI worry about our collective trauma getting in the way of what we could be doing to create a better society,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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