Do you collectively numb the routine violence?

This was the first day of my child in kindergarten, and the air in the early fall had a hint of fragility. While I waited in the long school capture line, my daughter’s father made not available comments on the necessity of school security guards. “Someone shot a Catholic school in Minneapolis today,” I answered without hinting PassionAs if I was describing the weather. Every year, there are signs of autumn return: a red or orange -colored chip in the trees, selection of apples, and the return of Latte spices, and in the United States, the first shooting for the school for the school year. In the face of such routine violence, we became Group numbness.

I was in middle school when the Columbin massacre occurred, and I clearly remember watching the footage of children jumping through the windows in the hope of escaping. It seemed as if the whole nation was angry, amazing and terrified. Critics were quick to direct fingers in all directions: in Marilyn Manson, Prozac, and insufficient weapons control policies. Everyone could have been talking about for weeks and months. When the kindergarten kindergarten was killed in the sandy hook slightly after a decade has passed, it seemed as if we had finally reached a turning point. This came the shooting and went, with ideas, prayers and little delicate work. After a decade, we saw the massacre at the Rob Elementary School in Uvalde and criticized the faded police response. The police were reluctant to interfere in a situation that we regularly trained for our students and teachers in closing active exercises.

I am sad to admit that I do not have the same level of anger today. Today, when I see these main headlines, I don’t open the article. I am not surprised. I am no longer terrified. I am numb. As a nation, we resigned ourselves to send our children to school without a social contract that will not be shot. We may have reached a turning point, but not that we were hoping. We designed despair and despair.

I am a mental health researcher. Whenever a mass shooting occurs, the media is looking for a motive – and a mental illness is placed in a scapegoat. Do not care that people with serious mental illness are more vulnerable to the victim of violence more than the perpetrators. Do not care that mental health financing is constantly on the cutting mass. Of course, the perpetrators of armed violence are not immune to mental health problems. But a society that allows terrorism through armed violence to become very common in order not to ensure a reaction that is not a society in which mental health can flourish. Armed violence is The number one killer for children In the United States.

Exposure to violence – differently or indirectly – is shockAnd The shock leads to poor mental health. Our collective mental health is the distant. This nation is shocked. We suffer from excessive formulation, as well as Learn the deficit. We are saturated with a news course that deals in terror, and we are drowning in policy discussions that miss the entire point. There are no signs of slowing fire in schools. In fact, at the time since I started writing this, another shooting occurred and the killing of a political activist. We again locked in the discussion cycle, but nothing.

Perhaps, we can ask our neighbors how to do and in reality to hear their answer. We can communicate if we are struggling. And if we have guns, we can keep them safe. Our collective mental health depends on the measures we take.