Monday's shooting at a Christian school in Nashville was a stark reminder of how frequently even young American children are exposed to gun violence. A Stanford study estimated that 100,000 schoolchildren in the U.S. attended a school at which a shooting occurred — and that was just in the two-year span from 2018 to 2019. The trauma of living through a shooting can last a lifetime: The same study found that students exposed to shootings at their school were less likely to graduate, less likely to be employed and had lower earnings in their mid-20s.
The Covenant School, where Monday's shooting occurred, is a private school that enrolls preschool through sixth-grade students and has about 200 students, according to a Nashville independent schools group. Now, after living through a shooting in which three of their peer students and three adults were slain, those students will face the social and psychological struggle of rebuilding their lives and their sense of security.
There have been so many school shootings in the U.S. that child psychologists and public health experts have developed a playbook for helping children who live through such tragedies. Dr. Philip J. Lazarus, an expert in school psychology and a professor at Florida International University, has spent decades studying school shootings and comforting the children who have lived through them.
Lazarus was the former president of the National Association of School Psychologists and helped co-found and chair the group's National Emergency Assistance Team, which leads crisis response in the aftermath of school shootings around the country. As a result, Lazarus not only has decades of experience studying and responding to school shootings, but also has observed school shootings became more common in the U.S. over the years.
Most students who bear witness to school shootings will have "at least some" of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress, Lazarus said. As for the psychological repercussions, "some will be dealing with this the rest of their lives." A child who experiences a school shooting firsthand may have issues concentrating, trouble sleeping, develop a fear of loud noises, experience mood swings, eating disorders or even "full-blown depression," he said.
Moreover, the impressionable young age of the children involved here — the three who died at The Covenant School were all reported as being 9 years old by the police — necessitates a slightly different counseling response, Lazarus noted.
Salon spoke at length with Lazarus about what happens to young children who experience a school shooting, how to help such children recover and how the demography of school shootings has changed over the decades.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
I struggled to find data on school shootings that was separated by the grade levels of the school, but my sense is that elementary school shootings seem to have become more common.
In the late 1990s and the beginning of the 21st century, you more often had students at the same school coming to that school and attacking their schoolmates. You know, over grievance, anger, desire to become notorious — they wanted to enact their suicidal and vengeful fantasies on people they felt tormented them. They wanted to make them pay a price.
More recently, we're seeing adults who aren't part of the student population thinking "this is the way I want to go out." Almost all these individuals are suicidal — whether it's a woman (which is rare) or a man, they're almost always suicidal. They don't expect that they'll come out of this situation alive. They kill themselves, or it's suicide by cop. They'll get killed by the police.
You founded the National Emergency Assistance Team at the National Association of School Psychologists, which helps children and adults in the aftermath of shootings. What kinds of things did you do to help?
There are multiple things. What's usually done first in these kinds of situations is that we provide services and support to the administrators because they need a lot of help. I advise they bring in a couple of principals, so one can run the school and the other can really deal with all the issues related to the crisis. We have parent meetings — that's typical.
They bring in mental health resources into the schools. Sometimes, it's school psychologists in that community. It's good for someone that really knows the school and knows the culture. [Editor's note: The National Association of School Psychologists publishes a resource on how to talk to children about violence, which you can find here.]
My concern in regard to this shooting [in Nashville] is that it's a very small, Christian school — you know, pre-K to 6th grade — and I'd surmise they don't have a school psychologist on staff because of the type of population and funds involved in maintaining that. The support they're going to have to get will have to come from the outside community, which may or may not know their students.
"I suspect all these kids (or most) will have at least post-traumatic stress symptomatology. As to whether or not it develops into post-traumatic stress disorder, well, some will definitely have that . . . Some will be dealing with this for the rest of their lives."
You'd also want to look into doing small group meetings with the youngsters that have been involved — in this case, probably everyone because it's such a small school. So, you'd have private meetings with small groups of students, sometimes maybe like four or six students at a time. In them, you would give them the opportunity to express everything they're going through, provide them coping strategies, stress reduction strategies. You want to validate their experiences, and you want them to ventilate about what they went through. You provide them with support in all ways possible. You help as best you can to help them predict what's going to happen in the future.
I don't know if they're even going to re-open the school because six people were killed in a very small school. Kids may be too afraid to go back to the school.
We do try to normalize situations and get kids in a little bit of a more normal routine. Sometimes, we'll look into which kids are the most vulnerable — which in this case would be the 9-year-olds and those that witnessed the killings that happened and the friends of the kids that got killed.
Say I am a child who witnessed a shooting at my school. What kinds of mental health effects, what kinds of symptoms might I experience as a result?
I suspect all these kids (or most) will have at least post-traumatic stress symptomatology. As to whether or not it develops into post-traumatic stress disorder, well, some will definitely have that. Usually, 20 to 30% in this kind of small community would develop PTSD. Probably 80 to 90% in this small community will at least have symptoms, I'd estimate. Whether or not it's full-blown, that's hard to say. Still, some will be dealing with this for the rest of their lives.
Some might have anger problems, all kinds of fears, difficulty sleeping, difficulty calming themselves down, scared when they hear loud noises . . . Many of them could have problems with focusing or concentration. They may have different kinds of mood swings, burst into tears when they're not anticipating it. They may have eating problems, or eat too much. A lot will have anxiety-related issues, as well as some who will experience full-blown depression. You know, you've lost a good friend. You're a 9-year-old, and your friend gets killed — that is hard on children.
Do younger children who experience a shooting have different reactions compared to teens? I have a perception of younger children as particularly vulnerable.
Yes, younger children are extremely vulnerable. A lot also depends on how their parents deal with the situation. If their parents listen to the child and provide support and comfort — let their child talk, and they don't discourage their children from dealing with the issues — with young children you have to reassure them they're safe as best you can. Of course, it's hard to do that now. Give them time to talk, and let them talk and talk and talk about it. You have to be patient, but you can't push them to talk either. Sometimes, they want to keep it inside. You may watch for clues that they want to talk, such as hovering around you.
Some youngsters may prefer writing or drawing, some might want to engage in music or dancing or song as an outlook. Young children may need concrete activities like picture books or imaginative play to help them identify and express their feelings. They're going to keep referring back to it, especially if they were very close to the shooting.
I'll talk briefly about younger elementary-aged kids versus older elementary. Younger elementary should be given brief information, balanced with reassurance that their school is safe and that adults are out there to protect and help them. They may want to check their doors are locked — meaning, remind children about exterior doors being locked — monitor them on the playground, so they know they're safe.
"Probably, if we wanted to have safer schools, we'd send all our males to Canada until they graduated, then bring them back — that would make the United States safer."
A good way to look at it is to ask what provides these kids with safety. Sometimes, it's just going to be being with their friends. Sometimes, it's being part of a religious group, or going to church or just being with their family. A lot of kids might retreat to types of games they like to play, get on their tablets, etc. Pets are really really helpful. In Parkland, the assisted pets therapy was very very popular. The kids really gravitated towards them.
So much depends on how adults around them handle the situation. Of course, adults are going to be concerned, too. In this case, how will this affect these children graduating 3rd or 4th grade? Are they even going to come back to school? What will happen to their learning? That's going to be significantly impaired.
If students do end up going back to the same school, the school needs to focus a lot of attention on their emotional well-being, as opposed to their academics. They're going to be emotionally banged up in so many ways.
But kids can also be resilient and can recover from this, and move their lives forward and integrate this experience into the fabric of their lives. They can grow from this — but it's not something that happens quickly.
What about slightly older children who live through this? Is their psychology different?
Teenagers really want to get a lot of solace and protection from their friends — and especially those people that went through the experience with them. It's almost like a different type of psyche: "You don't know what this is about — you might be 12 years old, and on my baseball team and you're my buddy, but you have no idea what I really went through!" So, sometimes kids will gravitate more toward fellow victims of this event.
You mentioned that female school shooters are very rare. Is there a social reason why that is?
They're not necessarily socialized to use violence to solve their problems, and they're not necessarily as connected with the gun culture. Probably, if we wanted to have safer schools, we'd send all our males to Canada until they graduated, then bring them back — that would make the United States safer.
I have some information that might be helpful, of characteristics of school shooters. I worked with the FBI many years ago when they were looking into this — studying who school shooters were. We found that in almost all cases, 98 to 99% in this school shooters study were males.
Typically, they had recently experienced a major loss — we will probably find it with this particular shooter. They planned an attack in advance of carrying it out. In other words, these aren't last-minute plans. Typically, they've had difficulty coping with a recent loss or perceived loss and exhibited a history of suicidal thoughts or intents. If you're going to do this, you're typically not going to expect to live. I've evaluated school shooters before, and they don't have an exit plan. They usually have some kind of grievance — we don't know exactly what — but we know this woman went to this school, and likely she had a grievance.
Also, usually shooters felt persecuted or bullied. Usually, they've experienced a loss of social status or major failures.
I'll give you some numbers that are typically above 50% for shooters: demonstrated an excessive interest in violence; experienced a loss of a romantic relationship; and demonstrated excessive interest in weapons. Many of these people also had a previous diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder, but not all of them. And it doesn't mean they didn't have one — just that they weren't necessarily diagnosed.
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