Psychosocial Safety and Mental Health Management After Gun Violence in Schools

By LisaMarie Martinez

Sitting in a lounge chair and sipping on a hot cup of chai, after a relaxed dinner, a teacher begins to review lessons planned for the next morning’s class. In another time zone it’s the end of a school day, and as students walk through the school halls they’re thinking about how much homework teachers assigned and worrying about being late for band practice. Somewhere in between these time zones, a parent is coming home from work and feeling too tired to cook so thinking about grabbing something from Burger King to bring home for the family.

Those are typical and expected thoughts of different people connected to schools through work, youth and children. However, gun violence in school systems has shifted the mental focus of teachers, students and parents. On a daily basis, their minds ponder the disturbing reality of questions: What can I do to avoid being shot and protect my students at the same time? Where can I take my child that’s safe so they can learn and grow? How do I manage what’s happening to me after the shooting in my school? Who can I trust? When will the gun violence end?

Gun Violence Disrupts Psychosocial Safety

According to Dr. Anat Geva, a licensed clinical psychologist, psychosocial safety is successfully having the safety, predictability, knowledge, and confi- dence to do what is expected of us and what we expect from our day, with minimal interference, and having the ability to successfully manage our daily challenges, both internally and externally.

Geva emphasizes that the trauma resulting from gun violence in the school system disrupts the psychosocial safety of students, teachers and parents to the point of them being unable to recoup, go back to a state of autopilot, and confidently go through their lives.

“For a student, they expect to come in, get their academics, socialize and engage in activities. When their life is at stake coming to school then it completely violates their ability to operate in the capacity of being a student and being a person. For teachers, the same thing. They might ask themselves if they could have seen it coming, if there was more that they could have done, should have done; so, a lot of guilt. For parents, who are the most removed, it feels like a complete loss of control,” she says.

Gun violence in schools can lead to students no longer trusting in, and maybe even feeling betrayed, by the system, according to Geva who formerly worked in a public school system.

“Children and adolescents are very highly dependent on their caregiver’s authority to create a structure for them, to create the container within they can operate, they can bounce around, they can experiment, they can explore and a lot of times push boundaries,” she explains. “When they see that their container, that the framework, be it parents or administration or the school, has not been able to protect them, to contain them, on the very basic level of just keeping them alive, keeping them physically safe, it makes it very scary, for a lot of them, and it creates a breach of trust.”

She believes that repairing psychosocial safety after gun violence requires working on the physical safety of the school, community and environment, and that the repairs be relayed very clearly to all parties involved. She identifies the importance of establishing long-term goals of inclusivity and unity as another way to try and reestablish the psychosocial safety of students.

“We also need to, longer term, think of inclusivity and furthering the notion of unity within a school so that everyone in the school feels part of it, as opposed to opposing it,” she says. “If there is a way of including those students that feel particularly marginalized, that would be a long-term goal to enhance that inclusivity and hopefully also provide a buffer going forward, so that there won’t be as much pain and potential hopelessness for students in the school to later want to come back and retaliate, as well as enough connections, that should some students feel alienated they will have some connection that the school and or other people will be informed of that.”

Geva, who works with clients on crisis, trauma, grief and loss at Family Care Center in Lone Tree, says the topic of gun violence in the school system moved her to emphasize the importance of honoring one’s trauma, as opposed to being defined by it.

“We live in a world where crisis and traumatic events are prevalent, but traumatic events do not need to define us,” she stresses. “The difference between experiencing traumatic events and being damaged by them is our ability to honor them, hold them sacred, and take the necessary action to repair.”

Mental Health and Mental Wellness after Gun Violence

Dr. Anthony Young, a mental health professional with a doctorate in clinical psychology, defines mental health as, “The successful performance of mental functions resulting in productive activities, fulfilling relationships with others, and the ability to adapt to change and to cope with adversity.”

The state of one’s mental health, whether an adult or a child, is dependent upon where they are in terms of their mental wellness. He says that mental health and wellness exist on a continuum. He believes that most people exist somewhere in the middle, depending on what is happening in their lives. If something traumatic happens, individuals move toward the opposite end of the continuum “toward being in psychological distress.”

“Students are less capable of having the psychological tools to cope with violence, many teachers might be afraid to even work in schools because of the threat of gun violence, and parents may feel a sense of helplessness, being unable to protect their children while they are at school,” he says.

Promoting safety from gun violence at schools, according to Young, could begin from within by teaching social, emotional and life skills such as alternatives to violence, anger management, and critical thinking skills, so that children can develop the resilience to cope with conditions that they can- not control rather than acting out in violence with a gun. He feels that a safe environment should be created to allow students, teachers and parents to not only engage in appropriate help-seeking behaviors, but to have the resources available for them because they “may not feel that they have permission to seek help, because of the stigma that’s attached to anyone who may have a mental health challenge.”

Mental illness is a term that refers collectively to all mental disorders and health conditions involving alterations in thinking, mood, behavior, or a combination of them. It is associated with distress and impaired functioning.

Because of the stigma associated with the term, Young prefers to refer to it as mental wellness. “I would rather refer to ‘mental illness’ in terms of

‘mental wellness’ or having mental challenges, because all human beings have mental challenges, irrespective of wealth, age, ethnicity, or cultural group. It is part of the human condition we all experience to some extent or another all throughout our lives. Mental illness has a strong stigma attached to it and no one wants to be considered to be ill.”

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17 17 th Annual Life Skills/Basketball Camp th Annual Life Skills/Basketball Camp

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The Basketball Camp will be directed by Coach Rudy Carey of East High School and Chucky Sproling from Manual High School. Life Skills Workshop will be conducted by Civil Rights Activist Alvertis Simmons

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3nd Annual Special Basketball Game - Thursday, June 22: Campers VS. Cops

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