05/31/2022
My heart these days is with the families in Uvalde Texas. I truly cannot imagine what they are feeling. If you are personally affected by this tragedy, please know I’m holding space, and I’m here to support you in any way I can.
Lately, it has been consuming my thoughts… what drives an individual to be so mentally disturbed that they can shoot up a school full of innocent kids? How can we prevent this and why does it keep happening here in America?
Partially because of the field I’m in, I feel almost responsible for knowing all the answers. I diagnose psychopathology as part of my job. So why is this so tough for even the professionals to figure out? The answer we are almost always given as to why these tragedies occur is “mental health.”
I have an issue with this. My personal opinion,
which many of you won’t agree with, is that this isn’t really a mental health crisis, at least not in the traditional sense. Every country in the world experiences mental health disorders… yet their citizens don’t murder innocent school children at the rate Americans do. We already have a major stigma towards people that are suffering from depression, anxiety, schizophrenia... The research shows that people with mental illness are no more dangerous than the general population (statistically you are most likely to be killed by a young adult male.. mental health has nothing to do with it). So when we categorize these killers as having “mental health issues” we are unfairly putting them into the same category as good people that would never hurt a soul other than themselves internally. We are encouraging our society to again deem those with mental health struggles as ”crazy” or “dangerous”, and I take issue with that.
Instead, I believe what drives people to do the unthinkable is trauma. To become so emotionally detached from reality, something horrific and incomprehensible must have occurred in that individual’s background. With the Uvalde shooter, one of the first questions I’m asking is why does he live with his grandmother? What is going on in that relationship that would make him want to shoot her? What happened with his parents? Why is he killing animals and bragging about it? Was he bullied? Abused? I don’t know the answers to these questions but would bet there is a significant trauma history there. I believe the best approach we have to try to prevent these tragedies from occurring is to look for these kids that are falling through the cracks. They almost always send cries for help prior to these massacres occurring. I believe identification and early intervention with these kids is key (along with advocating for more common sense gun laws, but I’m going to make a conscious effort here to leave politics off this page.)
When these shootings happen, it’s so common for people to reference “hugging my own kids a little tighter”. Admittedly, as a mother who has lost a child herself, that phrase makes me cringe a bit. You loving your own child more does nothing to make me feel any better about losing mine. But ironically, if we all did go home and love our kids harder, and truly tried to give them the best childhoods we possibly could… would these kids still grow up to be the kinds of people to shoot up an elementary school?
Maybe Mother Teresa knew what we as a nation are still figuring out.
“If you want to change the world,
Go home and love your family.”
