Americans generally understand the idea of risk and the importance of mitigation.
We have fire departments because we like things like Christmas lights, s’mores and deep-fried turkeys, and all of those come with the possibility of danger. We have life insurance because we want our families to be financially secure in the event of a death. We have seat belts, doorbell cameras and multifactor authentication not because we expect things to go wrong but because we know they could.
But there is something about shootings and other threats of violence in our schools that boxes in people and makes them resistant to a scope of problems and a range of solutions.
Whenever a mass shooting — school or otherwise — occurs, people tend to splinter into two camps. Just like an animal in the wild could show fight-or-flight instinct, Americans gravitate toward gun control or mental health arguments.
The gun discussion rarely gets off the ground. It gets bogged down in politics and shouting about reform and the Second Amendment.
But there is never enough forward motion on mental health.
“If we don’t prioritize that, it leads us down a dark road no one wants to go down,” said Eli Majocha, a 2023 Highlands High School graduate who remembers the scary feeling of threats.
Highlands, Burrell, Fox Chapel Area and other schools across Western Pennsylvania and Ohio have been targeted by recent threats. None came with actual violence but can still trigger that fight-or-flight fear response.
Dr. Jack Rozel is a Pitt psychiatry professor and medical director of UPMC’s Resolve Crisis Services. He calls today’s schoolchildren the “lockdown generation.”
Lockdown is one of those risk responses we have implemented. Like smoke alarms or fire extinguishers, lockdowns are a response that helps when a problem has already flashed into an emergency. Like the bruise from a seat belt or the black eye from an airbag, lockdown can cause its own complications in stress and anxiety.
That just underscores the importance of mental health as a holistic option to prevent problems and manage responses.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows increasing numbers of students experiencing depression, especially since 2017. The percentage of youth reporting suicidal thoughts and behaviors over that period has doubled.
Yet the American Psychological Association shows the country is woefully understaffed when it comes to school mental health professionals. In 2021-22, there was an average of one psychologist for every 1,127 school-age children.
What makes this particularly stark isn’t that we have so many school shootings. It’s that there are so many other problems that better mental health support could help our children handle.
Adequate mental health coverage could address depression, anxiety and suicide. It could identify kids being abused. It could help with eating disorders and bullying. It could channel kids into better pathways before violent patterns lead them to prison or worse. It literally could save lives.
We protect our children from so many dangers we worry might affect them. Every child needs mental health support, and it is time to prioritize providing it.
