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Preventing School Shootings: How Do We Keep Kids Safe at School?

Preventing School Shootings: How Do We Keep Kids Safe at School?

In today's world, parents fear sending their children to school. In the middle of algebra classes, and band rehearsals, students must practice lockdown drills in case a shooter ever enters their school. This is not something any parent wants to imagine. So, how do we keep kids safe? How do we prevent another Columbine, or Sandy Hook, or Oxford from happening?
As of September 2020, the Center for Homeland Defense and Security found that there had been 68 school shootings since Columbine in 1999 (Melgar 2020). School shootings in the United States happen an average of once every 77 days. This number is show to be increasing over the years (Melgar 2020). Having 68 school shootings in eleven years is such a high number, and to have that number growing is startling. From 1999 to 2014, the average number of days between shootings was 124 days. From 2015 to 2018, the average was 77 days (Melgar 2020). That’s a drastic change. The idea of school shootings becoming even more frequent should be upsetting for everyone.
The Everytown for Gun Safety fund has created a plan to help keep children safe at school, and to stop school shootings from being a normal occurrence. The plan lists eight targets to stop gun attacks in schools. The targets are: 1. Pass Extreme Risk Laws 2. Encourage Secure Firearm Storage 3. Raise the Age to Purchase Semi Automatic Firearms 4. Require Background Checks on All Firearm Sales 5. Create Threat Assessments in Schools 6. Put in School Security Upgrades 7. Create Trauma-Informed Emergency Planning 8. Create Safe and Equitable Schools (Everytown Research & Policy 2021).
While Everytown’s plan is thorough, and hits many key points, it would be extremely hard to pass. The United States is so polarized that passing gun laws or any legislation to prevent school shootings will face a lot of backlash. Because of this, I think Everytown’s plan will be viewed as too extreme. We have so many school shootings in the United States, but school shootings have become a political issue, and that makes it nearly impossible to do anything to stop them. Schools can work on promoting mental health awareness, they can do research-baked risk assessments, and can do more to prevent bullying. This certainly won’t prevent all school shootings, but it could be away to stop the number of school shootings from increasing.




Sources:
Everytown Research & Policy (2021). In Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund. Retrieved from https://everytownresearch.org/report/preventing-gun-violence-in-american-schools/

Melgar, L. (2020, September 17). ARE SCHOOL SHOOTINGS BECOMING MORE FREQUENT? WE RAN THE NUMBERS. In Center for Homeland Defense and Security. Retrieved from https://www.chds.us/ssdb/are-school-shootings-becoming-more-frequent-we-ran-the-numbers/

In Search of the Successful Psychopath

What is a successful psychopath?

To study a successful psychopath, we must identify what it is to succeed as a psychopath. In a sense, the psychopath that behaves in whatever way they choose and is never caught has succeeded. That behavior may be the classic serial killer but, recognizing that psychopaths may not always be set apart from society, it may also be embezzlement, fraud, identity theft, or just being a nasty coworker. But the goal of studying the successful psychopath is to explore the phenomenon of psychopaths who succeed within the boundaries of normative culture, not those whose transgressions go unnoticed. Further, as Welsh and Lenzenweger observed, defining the successful psychopath as the one who is never apprehended fails to consider the perspective of the individual in question, defining them by their relationship to criminal justice rather than their own experience (2021). What about classic metrics of success in a capitalist society - income, acclaim, and power?

Moving past psychopathy as a monolith

While scores to such as PCL-R can be used to determine the presence and degree of psychopathy - useful for formulating an approach to treatment - the individual components of those scores may become lost once the label is applied. But to facilitate the exploration of an anomaly such as the successful psychopath, researchers have adopted the triarchic approach, allowing characterization of in terms of boldness, meanness, and disinhibition (Table 1) rather than only a total score. In particular, the domain of "boldness" has been hypothesized to be a fulcrum around which the successful psychopath may pivot from the Hollywood serial killer to the hero of the boardroom.

Bold Belgian bosses

Vergauwe, Hofmans, Wille, Decuyper, and De Fruyt recruited psychology students to evaluate their bosses' effectiveness as leaders (Table 2), and recruited those bosses to complete the Dutch version of the psychopath exam: The Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised (Table 3). This study was performed twice, to assess for reproducibility, the second with a much larger sample size.

Vergauwe et al. offered three hypotheses. The Differential Severity model suggested a curvilinear relationship between psychopathic characteristics and business success. Psychopathy would increase success until a point of diminishing returns, at which point higher scores would lead to worse performance. This hypothesis did not examine the relationship between specific domains of psychopathy, rather it interpreted the total score. The results from the first and second studies refuted this, showing a linear relationship rather than curvilinear.

The Moderated Expression model added an additional criterion: Conscientiousness, as measured by the self-reported Dutch NEO Five-Factor Inventory (eg. I have a clear set of goals and work toward then in an orderly fashion). It posited that characteristics of psychopaths that might otherwise be maladaptive could be tempered and even made beneficial in the presence of certain qualities (others are noted below). This theory bore fruit in Study #1, showing that Task Performance worsened in individuals with low Conscientiousness as Self-Centered Impulsivity increased. In the presence of high Conscientiousness, Task Performance improved as Self-Centered Impulsivity went up. However, Study #2 did not replicate this result, and the presence of Conscientiousness actually correlated with a steeper drop in Contextual Performance and Charismatic Leadership as Cold-Heartedness increased. Of note, other research has suggested that qualities such as Executive Functioning, Intelligence, or even good parenting techniques may provide the moderating effects that turn increasing psychopathic domain scores into success (Welsh & Lezenwegere, 2021).

It was the Differential Configuration model that provided Vergauwe et al. with the most reproducible results. This hypothesis proposed that increases in certain domains of psychopathy would lead to greater success while increases in others would lead to worsening dysfunction. This was the hypothesis that assumed the least covariance between domains - an increase in boldness need not be accompanied by an increase in disinhibition or meanness, and a lower score in one might not portend lower scores in another. In Differential Configuration, Boldness (Fearless Dominance, in the Dutch model) showed positive, linear relationships with effectiveness, statistically significant in the arenas of Adaptive Performance and Charismatic Leadership. In contrast, Disinhibition was significantly associated with decreasing Task Performance, and Meanness was negatively associated with all leadership qualities. It seems Boldness may be the difference between the successful and unsuccessful psychopath, at least in the business world.

Successful psychopath in the streets - and in the sheets?

Boldness may have cemented its value in the work of Pilch, Lipka, and Gnielczyk when they looked at the role of psychopathic traits and social status as they related to romantic and sexual relationships (2021). In contrast to the other studies, their work left the evaluation of psychopathic characteristics to another individual, not the one being assessed for psychopathy. In further contrast, the research focused on women, a largely neglected population in the world of psychopathy research. The individuals in question were still men, and the study was limited by a heteronormative structure, but it provided women the opportunity to assess their partners’ psychopathic qualities, which were then analyzed in terms of self-reported satisfaction with both romantic and sexual relationships. Boldness won the day once more, identified as the quality most likely to increase women’s satisfaction rather than damage it. Increasing Meanness and Disinhibition scores had a deleterious effect.

What makes a successful psychopath is not yet well-characterized. Even the definition of a successful psychopath is unclear. But research to this point has suggested that Boldness, associated with resilience and social efficacy, may be the key to what makes one psychopath a secretive, perhaps murderous societal aberration, and another the leader of a Fortune 500 company - or perhaps the president of the United States.

Pilch, I., Lipka, J., & Gnielczyk, J. (2022). When your beloved is a psychopath. Psychopathic traits and social status of men and women’s relationship and sexual satisfaction. Personality and Individual Differences, 184, 111175. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.111175

Vergauwe, J., Hofmans, J., Wille, B., Decuyper, M., & de Fruyt, F. (2021). Psychopathy and leadership effectiveness: Conceptualizing and testing three models of successful psychopathy. The Leadership Quarterly, 32(6). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2021.101536

Welsh, E. C. O., & Lenzenweger, M. F. (2021). Psychopathy, charisma, and success: A moderation modeling approach to successful psychopathy. Journal of Research in Personality, 95, 104146. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2021.104146

Trigger Warnings: Necessary or Trivial?

Throughout the past almost two years of the pandemic, mental health awareness has become extremely widespread through the use of social media and due to the depressing nature of the pandemic. In online communities, individuals are making large strives towards being politically correct, enhancing emotional intelligence, and attempting to be sensitive to others, specifically through what are known as “trigger warnings”. Previously, I had only ever seen them used as joke or “meme” material, but with the increasing awareness of mental health, I realized that I should properly educate myself. So what exactly are trigger warnings? Why are they used?

Trigger warnings are warnings that “flag material that might cause distress or discomfort, or possibly trigger a panic attack in students with post-traumatic stress disorder” (3). Originally used online for topics that primarily included sexual assault, the term has now been coined for use with topics that include race, sexual orientation, disability, colonialism, torture, and other intense subjects (1). In classroom settings, students are encouraged to speak up about triggering topics, but do they even help with preventing stress responses?

On one end of the spectrum, trigger warnings can be seen as keeping others’ best interests in mind, and on the other end, it can be seen as something that does not “give them the freedom to develop their antifragility.” (1). For some students, this might be the case, as some trigger warnings have been shown to increase anxiety and stress responses as opposed to not including one. The most effective treatment for individuals with PTSD is a cognitive behavioral therapy that is trauma-focused. One of the main components of trauma-focused cognitive behavior therapy is called exposure therapy, where the individual is exposed to the traumatic event in some capacity to help the individual cope with their trauma and desensitize them to the traumatic event (4). The avoidance of these potentially triggering topics actually can make the stress response worse when the individual is exposed to it and can make intrusive thoughts about the trauma worse (1).

The true nature of trigger warnings, however, is that they are not supposed to prevent students from developing their antifragility by avoidance, but rather strengthen and fine-tune it, with warnings that say to regulate their emotions more with this unpleasant topic that is about to be discussed (1). The adverse of those intended effects have been shown in individuals who are not able to emotionally regulate their stress responses well. In a study in 2019 led by Mevagh Sanson, it was found that individuals who received a trigger warning before reading triggering material had no reduction in stress response compared to those who did not receive a trigger warning before reading the material (2).

While trigger warnings seem to be considerate and emotionally aware, they could be doing more harm than good for those who struggle with PTSD. Even though not every individual is the same and has the same experience, letting people figure out their triggers, and how to handle them is essential to healing from trauma. Putting censors on every potentially triggering topic is not going to expedite that.


Citations:
1. Kaufman, S. B. (2019, April 5). Are trigger warnings actually helpful? Scientific American Blog Network.
2. Mevagh Sanson, D. S. (n.d.). Trigger warnings are trivially helpful at reducing negative affect, intrusive thoughts, and avoidance. SAGE Journals.
3. NCAC report: What's all this about trigger warnings? National Coalition Against Censorship. (2020, January 2).
4. PTSD Facts & Treatment: Anxiety and Depression Association of America, ADAA. PTSD Facts & Treatment | Anxiety and Depression Association of America, ADAA. (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2021, from https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/posttraumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/treatment-facts.

Denial, the Harmful Resilience

Humans are very resilient, in many different ways. Some of those ways are not necessarily the healthiest. We have this “Keep on trucking” attitude that usually contributes to us overlooking major issues. Therefore we can easily underestimate the individual or generational effects that trauma has on us. “Regardless of how trauma is introduced, the direct and indirect exposure can alter how the brain process information and facilitate behavior (Dr. Rousseau 2021).” The effects of trauma are apparent when looking at our weakest links; our children and unborn children. “Trauma in pregnancy has dramatically increased in the past 25 years and is now the number one cause of non-obstetrical maternal death in the United States. With major trauma, there is a 40 to 50% risk of fetal death.” (D. M. Krywko, F. K. Toy, M. E. Mahan, J. Kiel. 2021)

The unhealthy resilience in adults can cause them to band-aid their harm rather than heal it, therefore continuing to ignore the severe effects of trauma, subsequently causing more harm. It seems we are stuck on a Merry-go-round of trauma, fuelled by denial. Comparable to infants, adults usually do not die physically from trauma, but the effects are dire. More than 17,000 people in the US have died as of May 28, 2021, from gun-related violence. There were 44,834 total deaths by suicide in 2020 according to the CDC and exedra.

The same occurrences that cause adult trauma can cause trauma to an unborn baby “in utero.” and the same deadly effects can occur to both yet we choose to continue ignoring them. One would argue we need to prevent in utero trauma, another will argue that crime rates need to decrease. One will state that poverty needs to be addressed in order to lessen the trauma, and another will argue for a budget increase to police training. All of them would be correct. Writing this blog, I am realizing there is no one topic I could possibly bring to your attention that hasn’t been spoken of to death. There are many brilliant individuals who have thought of trauma prevention, healing trauma, bringing our judicial and mental health systems closer together in order to both prevent and heal trauma, exedra. Yet we find ourselves in the same place asking the same questions years later. So I end this blog without presenting more data to support a topic I may or may not actually have knowledge of. I will not distract you with insignificance. I leave you with a question. What are we missing in order for actual change to happen?

Paper or Plastic?

References:

Pregnancy Trauma

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK430926/

Rousseau, D. (2021). Module 3: Neurobiology of Trauma. Boston University Metropolitan College: Blackboard.

Suicides fell in 2020, early CDC data shows

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/suicides-fell-in-2020-early-cdc-data-shows.html

THE IN UTERO EXPERIENCE TRAUMA BEFORE BIRTH

https://www.communityservices.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/1549761/The-in-utero-experience-web.pdf

The US has had 225 mass shootings in 2021 so far. Here's the full list.

https://www.insider.com/number-of-mass-shootings-in-america-this-year-2021-3

Van der Kolk, B.  2014.  The Body Keeps Score:  Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Penguin Random House.  New York.

Dealing with Trauma and Stress During a Global Pandemic

When COVID-19 first made it's appearance in America in January of 2020, most thought it was just a flu going around and that there was nothing to worry about. Two months later March 2020 came around, and the world literally stopped. Businesses and restaurants were forced to close down, and some have never reopened. Schools made history by shutting down and students learned completely virtually. And the unemployment rate skyrocketed. It's been a year and a half since a global pandemic started and finally, things are opening up. States are lifting their mask mandates as well as their capacity limits, and the job market is plentiful. What no one predicted from a pandemic was the impact it would have on the human psyche.

The stress that adults feel came from the financial stress of either having lost a job or received less hours due to the pandemic, emotional stress from having not seen loved ones since the quarantine started as well as the feelings of being isolated. The stress that children feel are starting to worry children's psychologists. The pandemic has left children feeling unsafe and out of control, and the complete shift in routine such as a disruption in school and family gatherings and an isolation from loved ones can have very dangerous consequences. It is unknown exactly how many people are experiencing symptoms of PTSD, but children who are watching the news a lot are showing more symptoms from the repeated exposure to the trauma of a pandemic. As for adults, their trauma most likely comes from having understood what COVID-19 can do to the human body, with the most common effect being death.

Long term consequences of these traumas and stresses not being addressed are: a decreased physical health, a higher risk of suicide or self harm, and a greater risk of substance abuse. To treat symptoms of dress, psychologists recommend seeking psychotherapy and counseling. When it comes to children, they say the parents really need to prioritize their children and have age appropriate discussions about the pandemic because it is very important for children to know about the virus and what it does. Parents also should teach their children relaxation techniques such as deep breathing.

Loma Linda University Health posted several tips on how to deal with stress during a pandemic such as: 1) Step away from negative news and negative social media. Instead, think about and focus on the positive things. 2) Get enough sleep, exercise, eat well, and avoid too much alcohol or substance use. 3) Find things that make you happy! Video chat with loved ones, plan a virtual game night, paint, or even garden.

The year has been filled with a lot of negatives, with a pandemic taking the lives of thousands, of police shootings, riots, etc. Not everything is negative though; there are still good people out there trying to make the best out of everything. Look around; you can feel the positives in the woods when the breeze blows through the trees and you can even see the positives right in your own neighborhood as the teenagers help an elderly couple mow their grass.

Resources

Campbell, L. (2020, September 8). The World Is Experiencing Mass Trauma from COVID-19: What You Can Do. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health-news/the-world-is-experiencing-mass-trauma-from-covid-19-what-you-can-do.

Understanding the long-term collective trauma from COVID-19. News. (n.d.). https://news.llu.edu/health-wellness/understanding-long-term-collective-trauma-from-covid-19.

Comparison to the Holocaust vs. Incarceration

Genocide is an atrocity on humans. The fact that it is dependent on the complicity of ordinary people was best shared by Zimbardo and Milgram in their experiments. The Stanford Prison Experiment by Philip Zimbardo and Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience to authority. Zimbardo’s experiment studied why guards and prisoners become compliant and authoritarian. The participants were 11 guards and 10 prisoners who also were college students, who volunteered for this experiment. The guards were told that they must maintain “Law and order” in this prison. These were the instructions for guards only, and the first thing they did was dehumanize the prisoners by taking their clothes and replacing their names with a number, just like in Auschwitz. “Philip Zimbardo (2007) himself decided that his Stanford Prison Experiment was unethical because it violated two of these principles. Participants “did suffer considerable anguish…and (the experiment) resulted in such extreme stress and emotional turmoil that five of the sample of initially healthy young prisoners had to be released early” (Van Der Kolk, p.68).

In Milgram’s study, “Milgram had recruited community members to participate in his experiment at Yale University. His research was stimulated by the success of Germany’s Nazi regime of the 1930s and 1940s in enlisting the participation of ordinary citizens in unconscionable acts of terror and genocide. Milgram set out to enlisting the participation of ordinary citizens in unconscionable acts of terror and genocide under which ordinary citizens will be obedient to authority figures’ instructions to inflict pain on others” (Van Der Kolk, p.68). Milgram’s experiment was by asking subjects to deliver electric shocks (fake) to students supposedly learning a memory task. Those getting shocked were actually members of the research team and would eventually cry out in simulated pain. Many participants still complied with the authority and he then debriefed the participants and followed up later on their well-being. Nobody has suffered long-term harm, and Milgram’s experiments adhered to the ethical guidelines.

Both experiments showed how ordinary people can be manipulated. “Between those who acted of conviction because they shared values of the regime and its policies on the one hand, and nominal compliers who acted against their will under supervision but did not obey orders when not being watched, there were other possibilities. Many accepted and internalized the role expectation that soldiers must be tough and obedient and carry out state policies regardless of the content of specific orders. Soldiers and police often willingly obey orders and implement policy that they do not identify as commensurate with their own personal values, even when not supervised, in the same way that soldiers and police officers often willingly follow orders and are killed in the line of duty, though they do not want to die” (Browning, p.219). Browning finds Zimbardo more relevant I believe, because his experiment was first dehumanizing the prisoner, which is what they did at the “camps”. The whole experiment was in a prison setting like the camps. The similarity overlaps and It can be believed that humans can become sub-humans under certain circumstances. These were ordinary men, your neighbors, your butcher, your schoolteacher, or any ordinary human in your town. But genocide is the most terrible crime to conceive. God forgive us if it should occur again, but unfortunately it still occurs in other countries to this day.

In continuation there were a group of men barely mentioned in the books, but important enough to be included. These are the “Musselmans” of the camps. They are the ones who moped around. “Experience showed that only exceptionally could one survive more than three months in this way. All the musselmans who finished in the gas chambers have the same story, or more exactly, have no story; they followed the slope down to the bottom, like streams that run down to the sea” (Levi, p.90). We as a society cannot become like those men. We can’t give up on hope, and the good that is in most people, and try not to let this happen again. We have no right to eliminate a race by blaming them for something “we think” they did. This was bullyism in the extreme.

I also wanted to point out the correlation of “the Trauma of the Incarceration Experience”, where Mika’ il DeVeaux spent 32 years as a prisoner. 32 years is a lot longer than 5 or 6 years the Jews had to spend during the Holocaust. DeVeaux stated, “The experience of being locked in a cage has a psychological effect upon everyone made to endure it. No one leaves unscarred” (DeVeaux, p257). DeVeaux stated, “Isolation did not help my state. More than anything else, I recall feeling sad and depressed. I felt caged, alone, and helpless” (DeVeaux, p.267). I couldn’t stop relating concentration camps to our prisons. I also couldn’t stop thinking about the suffering my great grandparents went through each and every day during the Holocaust. They were very fortunate they were able to escape and start a new life here in the United States of America.

Some wise words from Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D. “When I give presentations on trauma and trauma treatment, participants sometimes ask me to leave out the politics and confine myself to talking about neuroscience and therapy. I wish I could separate trauma from politics, but as long as we continue to live in denial and treat only trauma while ignoring its origins, we are bound to fail. In today’s world your ZIP code, even more than your genetic code, determines whether you will lead a safe and healthy life. People’s income, family structure, housing, employment, and educational opportunities affect not only their risk of developing stress but also their access to effective help to address it. Poverty, unemployment, inferior schools, social isolation, widespread availability of guns, and substandard housing all are breeding grounds for trauma. Trauma breeds further trauma; hurt people hurt other people” (Van Der Kolk, p.350). We have to open our eyes to trauma and talk about the trauma we face, because if not, it might happen again.

Work Cited:

Browning, C. R., & Mazal Holocaust Collection. (1992). Ordinary men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the final solution in Poland (1st ed.). HarperCollins, Chapters 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 10, and 18 and the Afterword.

DeVeaux, M. (2013). The trauma of the incarceration experience. Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, 48(1), 257-278.

Levi, P. (1996). Survival in Auschwitz. Touchstone Books.

Van Der Kolk, B. (2015). The Body keeps the score brain, mind and body in the healing of

trauma. Penguin Books.