It is important to understand that no two people experience such horrific exposure in the same way. The extent of the trauma, stress or fear can vary. Survivors of a shooting may want to avoid the neighborhood where the shooting occurred or the context related to shooting, such as grocery stores, if the shooting happened at one. In the worst case, a survivor may develop post-traumatic stress disorder.
PTSD is a debilitating condition that develops after exposure to serious traumatic experiences such as war, natural disasters, rape, assault, robbery, car accidents – and, of course, gun violence. Nearly 8% of the U.S. population deals with PTSD. Symptoms include high anxiety, avoidance of reminders of the trauma, emotional numbness, hypervigilance, frequent intrusive memories of trauma, nightmares and flashbacks. The brain switches to fight-or-flight mode, or survival mode, and the person is always waiting for something terrible to happen.
When the trauma is caused by people, as in a mass shooting, the impact can be profound. The rate of PTSD in mass shootings may be as high as 36% among survivors. Depression, another debilitating psychiatric condition, occurs in as many as 80% of people with PTSD.
Survivors of shootings may also experience survivor’s guilt, the feeling that they failed others who died or did not do enough to help them, or just guilt at having survived.
PTSD can improve by itself, but many people need treatment. There are effective treatments available in the form of psychotherapy and medications. The more chronic it gets, the more negative the impact on the brain, and the harder to treat.
Children and adolescents, who are developing their worldview and deciding how safe it is to live in this society, may suffer even more. Exposure to horrific experiences such as school shootings or related news can fundamentally affect the way people perceive the world as a safe or unsafe place, and how much they can rely on the adults and society in general to protect them.
They can carry such a worldview for the rest of their lives, and even transfer it to their children. Research is also abundant on the long-term detrimental impact of such childhood trauma on a person’s mental and physical health and their ability to function through their adult life.