The Hidden Costs of School Shootings

Sept. 9, 2021 -- Heather Martin and her choir classmates were doing vocal warmups astatine Columbine High School connected a outpouring greeting successful 1999 erstwhile a pupil burst into the room, informing astir gunshots downstairs. Soon, Martin recalls, a teacher rushed successful and told the class, “‘They’re coming up the stairs. You person to hide.’”

Martin, past a 17-year-old senior, crammed into the second-floor choir bureau with 59 different students. They barricaded the door. Fire alarms were blaring, but they could perceive gunshots and screams, possibly from the hallways oregon the adjacent library.

In the packed office, “Kids were crying, praying, hugging each other, talking to each other, but besides trying to stay quiet,” Martin says. As clip dragged on, the country grew hot. Students climbed up and removed ceiling tiles to instrumentality the room. Then they had different idea: They wrote their names connected the ceiling tiles.

“In lawsuit thing should happen, radical would cognize that we were there,” Martin says, her dependable inactive catching somewhat aft 22 years.

The students huddled for 3 hours earlier a SWAT squad reached them and escorted them from the building. The Columbine assailants, 2 boys from Martin’s elder class, had taken their ain lives aft sidesplitting 1 teacher and 12 students and wounding galore more. Martin wasn’t physically injured, nor had she mislaid anyone close. But arsenic an indirect victim, she struggled with the intelligence fallout for years.

In the 2 decades since the Columbine High School shooting successful Littleton, CO, weapon unit has continued to plague U.S. schools. Not each are wide shootings similar Columbine, Sandy Hook, oregon Parkland. Some impact a azygous fatality, specified arsenic the caller decease of Bennie Hargrove, a 13-year-old mediate schoolhouse pupil successful Albuquerque, NM. He died Aug.13 aft a classmate changeable him during their luncheon break, lone 3 days into the caller schoolhouse year. According to quality reports, witnesses told constabulary that the shooter, besides 13, opened occurrence aft Hargrove told him to halt bullying a friend.

No national bureau tracks schoolhouse shootings. But according to probe from The Washington Post, since Columbine, an estimated 256,000 children astatine 278 schools person been exposed to weapon unit during schoolhouse hours.

This twelvemonth has offered nary respite. Since March, erstwhile schools began reopening aft pandemic shutdowns, astatine slightest 14 schoolhouse shootings person occurred, the Post reported.

Some experts interest that the accent of the pandemic could heighten hazard for much field shootings.

According to the Post’s database, 151 students, teachers, and others person been killed and 323 person been injured successful schoolhouse shootings since 1999. Media attraction typically focuses connected the injured oregon deceased oregon connected families that person mislaid loved ones. Less attraction falls connected the galore children and teens who look physically unharmed but are often psychologically scarred.

Emerging Research

This increasing radical requires deeper understanding, according to Maya Rossin-Slater, PhD, a wellness economist and subordinate prof astatine the Stanford University School of Medicine. She and her colleagues person begun studying the intelligence and acquisition paths of U.S. students who person experienced schoolhouse shootings.

The weapon unit they examined included “incidents wherever idiosyncratic brings a weapon to schoolhouse and the weapon is fired, whether that’s during a combat oregon possibly a suicide that happens connected schoolhouse grounds,” Rossin-Slater says.

Shootings mightiness beryllium indiscriminate oregon personally targeted, oregon they could hap during a crime, specified arsenic a robbery.

“These types of events don’t thin to beryllium covered precise overmuch by media outlets due to the fact that they’re not arsenic melodramatic arsenic wide shootings,” she says. “Nevertheless, what we’re uncovering is that due to the fact that these events are a batch much frequent, a batch of kids are exposed.”

In a 2019 study, her probe squad examined younker antidepressant usage aft 44 fatal schoolhouse shootings successful the U.S. betwixt 2008 and 2013.

In the 2 years aft the shootings, antidepressant prescriptions for those nether property 20 were 21% higher successful the neighborhoods wrong 5 miles of campus, compared to areas 10 to 15 miles farther away. Proximity matters.

“Fatal shootings person ample and persistent impacts connected the intelligence wellness of section youth,” wrote Rossin-Slater and her chap researchers from Stanford, Yale, and Northwestern universities.

Their survey focused solely connected antidepressants, but these drugs are prescribed not lone for depression, but besides for anxiety and posttraumatic accent disorder (PTSD).

“It’s benignant of an all-encompassing measurement of attraction for intelligence health, but it’s not cleanable due to the fact that we’re not capable to capture, for instance, the underlying incidence of these conditions,” Rossin-Slater says.

A Range of Experiences

During a schoolhouse shooting, “not everyone has had the aforesaid experience,” says Melissa Brymer, PhD manager of coercion and catastrophe programs astatine the UCLA-Duke National Center for Child Traumatic Stress. Some students person witnessed radical being changeable oregon provided first aid to the injured, portion others mightiness person been successful unaffected parts of a gathering and had nary thought what was happening erstwhile they evacuated. Some students mightiness person mislaid household members, friends, a fellow oregon girlfriend, oregon a beloved teacher.

Brymer has worked with galore communities aft schoolhouse shootings, from a 2001 shooting astatine Santana High School successful Santee, CA, that killed 2 students and wounded 13, to the 2012 calamity astatine Sandy Hook Elementary School successful Newtown, CT. That shooting took the lives of 20 students and six unit members.

Just aft specified shootings, survivors volition consciousness a scope of emotions, she says, including “sadness, grief, anger, disorder connected wherefore this could hap here, oregon being acrophobic that it could hap again.”

People go hyper-vigilant, too, she says. “Our bodies spell connected alert. ‘Wherever I am, is it safe?’”

Sleep disruptions go commonplace, Brymer says, “whether it’s not being capable to autumn dormant oregon having nightmares oregon conscionable not having restful sleep.”

While immoderate students volition thin connected peers for support, she says, others “isolate and region themselves from others.”

If students make PTSD, they whitethorn person a assortment of symptoms: intrusive memories oregon flashbacks of the event, nightmares, ever being connected defender against information oregon being easy startled, crankiness, a hard clip feeling affirmative emotions, feeling emotionally numb, oregon trying to debar radical oregon places that are reminders of the event.

‘Unsafe and Terrified’

Martin, present 40, inactive lives successful the Denver area. She remembers being truthful frightened close aft the shooting that she and her younger sister, a freshman astatine the time, started sleeping successful the aforesaid furniture with the lights on. If Martin needed to spell to the slope oregon state station, her sister ever went with her.

“I felt wholly unsafe and terrified that I would beryllium unsocial if that happened again,” she says.

She can’t callback if she had nightmares, she says. Rather, she had a vivid representation that she knows wasn’t a existent memory, “but it’s similar a practice of however I felt.”

In reality, the choir kids had been sitting cross-legged connected apical of each different to enactment distant from the bureau door. “But successful my mind, I’m lasting up successful the mediate of each these radical sitting down and I’m crying each by myself. That feeling of isolation and being unsocial started happening close away.”

Martin and the different students finished the world twelvemonth astatine different precocious schoolhouse successful town. Later, she saw a backstage counsellor 4 oregon 5 times. But looking back, she had minimized her trauma, she says, adjacent though she had feared for her life.

“I wasn’t physically injured, and I didn’t suffer a loved one. I thought: ‘Somebody has it worse. I don’t person a close to struggle.’”

But she endured galore struggles erstwhile she went to a section assemblage college. She had occupation coping emotionally.

“I retrieve feeling isolated, lonely, aggravated -- oh, my gosh, truthful angry.”

She developed an eating disorder and dabbled successful recreational drugs.

Still, she dismissed the relation of trauma.

“I cognize I’m not OK, but I was refusing to judge that it had to bash with Columbine. It had been a year.”

In retrospect, she says, “That’s laughable.”

At college, traumatic memories intruded. About 6 months aft the shooting, she was sitting successful a assemblage English people erstwhile the occurrence alarm sounded during a regular drill.

“It was the archetypal clip I was blindsided by a trigger,” she says. “I conscionable started sobbing successful the mediate of my English class.”

She remembered the different students staring astatine her successful confusion.

There were different reminders. The Columbine killers had changeable galore of their victims successful the schoolhouse library. When a prof assigned a insubstantial that progressive room research, Martin told him, “I person a truly hard clip successful libraries, peculiarly schoolhouse libraries.”

When she tried going into the field library, she recalls, “I’m sitting determination staring astatine the exit. My heart rate is elevated. There’s nary focusing going connected due to the fact that I support looking astatine the entrance.”

The prof allowed her to crook successful her insubstantial without going to the library.

“My representation is truly atrocious from astir apt that archetypal twelvemonth oregon two,” she says. “It’s trauma. It’s hard to concentrate. It’s hard to absorption connected thing that doesn’t look similar a precedence astatine that moment. You person to consciousness harmless to learn, and your consciousness of information is wholly shattered.”

She was ne'er diagnosed with anxiety, depression, oregon PTSD, but a mates of years aft the shooting, she developed anxiousness attacks.

“Mine were truthful all-compassing that I would curl up with symptom successful my abdomen and commencement hyperventilating and couldn’t talk,” she says. “They were truly debilitating.”

After 2 oregon 3 years -- she says she can’t callback precisely -- she dropped retired of assemblage and got a occupation astatine a restaurant.

Academic Problems

Martin’s world struggles aft a schoolhouse shooting aren’t surprising. In a 2021 study, Rossin-Slater and researchers astatine the University of Texas and astatine Northwestern University looked astatine 33 nationalist schools successful Texas wherever shootings had taken spot betwixt 1995 and 2016, not each of them involving fatalities.

“We recovered that vulnerability to shootings astatine schools leads to a higher likelihood that kids are absent from school, they’re much apt to repetition a grade, they’re little apt to postgraduate from precocious school, they’re little apt to spell to college, and erstwhile they’re successful their mid-20s, they person little earnings,” Rossin-Slater says.

The survey recovered that specified students were 6% little apt to beryllium employed betwixt the ages of 24 and 26. Those who held jobs earned 13% little than students who had attended akin schools without a shooting.

School weapon violence, Rossin-Slater says, “is truly costly successful presumption of the kids’ intelligence health, successful presumption of their aboriginal acquisition and economical trajectories.”

Some children mightiness beryllium excessively frightened to be class. In the years aft the 2012 Sandy Hook attack, standardized English and mathematics scores fell substantially passim the schoolhouse district, according to Wellesley College researchers Phillip Levine, PhD, and Robin McKnight, PhD, with mathematics scores tumbling by astir 30%.

The 2 economists attributed overmuch of the diminution to chronic absenteeism, which much than doubled astatine Sandy Hook Elementary successful the twelvemonth aft the shooting. Students were besides absent astatine different simple schools successful town, but not to the aforesaid degree.

‘Numb’ to the Emotions

Noel Sudano, 38, remembers overmuch world disruption among her peers astatine Columbine: students who opted to larn from home, others whose grades dropped, oregon those who came to people lone present and then.

One bully friend, who had to measurement implicit a victim’s assemblage connected the mode retired of the building, struggled erstwhile schoolhouse resumed successful the fall.

“That inferior twelvemonth for her was awful,” Sudano says. “I retrieve her conscionable not attending precise much. She was successful my chemistry class, and I deliberation I saw her possibly erstwhile a week, if that.”

Sudano, who was a 16-year-old sophomore during the shooting, had tally from mathematics people connected a teacher’s orders, abandoning her belongings and feeling excessively terrified to adjacent look down her. When she was allowed backmost that summertime to cod her things, the mounting was frozen successful time.

“My publication was unfastened connected the desk, a pencil was sitting successful the divot, my purse was inactive there. It was truly eerie,” she says.

The schoolhouse inactive bore the marks of a transgression scene: lockers with slug holes successful them, and areas that SWAT teams had marked arsenic each wide aft searching for bombs.

When she sat successful people again, anxious thoughts swirled: “OK, americium I truly here? Is it OK? Are we harmless here?”

More calamity rocked the schoolhouse that archetypal year. Greg Barnes, a talented 17-year-old jock successful Sudano’s graduating class, took his beingness astir a twelvemonth aft the shooting.

“He was a hoops player, appeared to person everything. That deed america beauteous hard. That was truly shocking,” she says.

After graduation, Sudano decided to be a tiny assemblage successful Idaho, motivated successful portion to flight the overwhelming grief and trauma successful Littleton.

“I didn’t recognize it astatine the time, but that was a large operator for maine going retired of authorities to college. I conscionable felt similar this is excessively much, I can’t benignant retired my thoughts astir everyone who’s going done their ain pain.”

Sudano near Colorado and poured her energies into studying astatine college. By inferior year, though, her information had flagged.

“I was conscionable feeling lethargic and uninspired,” she says.

She sought counseling aft feeling truthful debased that academics were nary longer a buffer.

“I utilized that to debar feeling each of the symptom that I knew was successful there, but it caught up with me, and that was OK. The timing -- I don’t deliberation that it was unhealthy. I deliberation I conscionable needed abstraction earlier I was truly acceptable to process it.”

In Brymer’s probe connected 10 communities that had suffered wide violence, she recovered akin delayed reactions -- students who didn’t admit the effects of trauma until halfway done college. Some thought that the champion attack was to support pushing forward, lone to recognize aboriginal that they needed help, she says. Some felt undeserving.

Sudano besides minimized her trauma and wrestled with survivor’s guilt, which tin hap aft radical person lived done a life-threatening situation. They often question wherefore they survived erstwhile others died and what they could person done differently, adjacent to the constituent of over-analyzing the lawsuit erstwhile they did thing wrong. Survivor’s guilt tin awesome PTSD.

Many students, similar Martin, had been trapped wrong the schoolhouse for hours. Sudano faulted herself for moving from mathematics people and not “going astir and knocking connected different classrooms to marque definite radical were getting out. ‘I should person done more. I should person been looking retired for different radical alternatively of conscionable myself.’”

But she has since made bid with her 16-year-old self.

“You cognize what you cognize successful the moment,” she says. “I didn’t truly recognize what was happening successful the infinitesimal arsenic I was moving retired of the building.”

Reminders of Trauma and Loss

Students, parents, teachers, staff, and communities often respond to schoolhouse shootings with daze and disbelief. Many ne'er thought specified a transgression could hap successful their midst.

Brymerm, from the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, warns that successful the aftermath, galore survivors volition look communal experiences.

For example, they mightiness brushwood trauma reminders that bring backmost harrowing memories. For Martin, it was the dependable of a occurrence drill astatine college. For others, the triggers could beryllium constabulary oregon ambulance sirens, helicopters overhead, fireworks, oregon different schoolhouse shooting successful the news. Even a pupil popping a spot container successful the cafeteria tin bring backmost memories of gunshots, according to Brymer.

Students volition besides look reminders of loss.

Students mightiness amusement assorted symptoms, depending connected their property and idiosyncratic acquisition of the shooting. They mightiness person aggravated affectional upset, symptoms of anxiety oregon depression, occupation with academics oregon relationships, and carnal signs that see aches and pains. Older children mightiness behave successful risky ways, including usage of drugs oregon alcohol.

“Kids bash header by utilizing substances to numb themselves, to header with the reactions that they’re experiencing.” Brymer says.

“And we bash interest astir suicide,” she says. “On anniversaries, radical interest astir different incidental happening. Those of america that bash this work, we cognize that this is an accrued clip for suicide.”

Nowadays, she faces a newer foe: societal media falsehoods. That includes conspiracy theories that distort shootings arsenic hoaxes, a hurtful and confusing phenomenon, she says. “The kids ask, ‘Why are radical saying this didn’t happen? Don’t they similar us?’”

Brymer instructs students connected utilizing societal media successful a steadfast way, including steering wide of videos and comments that could beryllium upsetting. “It’s 1 portion of my occupation that I did not expect but is present becoming commonplace. People deliberation it’s conscionable Sandy Hook and Parkland, and it’s not.”

The pandemic mightiness airs dangers, too, arsenic much youths person faced economical insecurity and intelligence wellness problems.

“That concerns me, due to the fact that that could summation the hazard that weapon unit takes place,” Rossin-Slater says.

Already, weapon assaults person occurred connected reopened campuses. In North Carolina, 2 caller precocious schoolhouse shootings occurred wrong 3 days, and 1 led to a student’s death. Both schools were locked down.

The Road Ahead

For many, the roadworthy is long.

The Columbine shooting happened connected the 20^th of April.

“I inactive get a small spot anxious oregon snippy oregon don’t slumber that well. I consciousness a batch of alleviation aft that time passes,” Martin says.

She worked successful the edifice manufacture for a decennary earlier going backmost to assemblage successful her precocious 20s. She’s present an English teacher astatine a precocious schoolhouse successful Aurora, CO, and immoderate of her students cognize that she’s a Columbine survivor.

After a wide shooting astatine the Century 16 theatre successful Aurora successful July 2012, Martin co-founded The Rebels Project, named aft the Columbine mascot. The nonprofit enactment offers enactment to survivors of wide violence. Along with different volunteers, Martin seeks to beryllium “someone who provides hope, due to the fact that it does get amended and determination are times erstwhile you don’t judge that,” she says.

Sudano inactive lives successful the Denver country and is the parent of 2 simple school-age children.

She knows of erstwhile schoolmates who haven’t fared well. Some were wracked with aggravated survivor’s guilt and developed “pretty scary addiction issues,” she says. “One had similar 5 DUIs, and he’s present facing sentencing due to the fact that helium conscionable can’t get his issues nether control.”

But from specified a acheronian and ruinous time successful 1999, a almighty representation inactive echoes. Sudano and different students had tally from the Columbine field to stitchery astatine a parkland crossed the street, unsure of what was happening wrong the building.

“There were tons of radical crying, and determination was truthful overmuch confusion,” she says.

Then she looked up and saw teachers lining the sidewalk facing the school, “without question creating this shield of protection,” she says. “I was struck by the information that they were successful this unknown, scary situation, conscionable similar we were, and they snapped into enactment and did what they felt they needed to bash to support their students. It looked similar they didn’t hesitate.”