Effects of Mass Shootings on the Mental Health of Children and Adolescents

Bridging K-12 Student Mental Health Policy to Practice Gaps with a Multi-Component Framework

K-12 schools are a major sector for efforts to prevent and treat student mental health problems. In the United States, these efforts have led to the emergence of the MultiTiered System of Supports (MTSS) universal prevention, early intervention, and treatment policy framework. With a major focus on behavioral and mental health, MTSS has been adopted by all fifty state education departments. However, multi-level complexities of addressing student mental health within and across organizational structures complicate MTSS and broader policy development, implementation, and evaluation; disconnects between policy writers and practitioners obstruct progress, limiting positive outcomes. To bridge these policy-to-practice gaps, a multi-component solution is needed. The authors propose integrating the following elements: the Massachusetts School Mental Health Consortium's Five Guiding Principles for Building a Coordinated School Mental Health System, the comprehensive school improvement methodology Evolutionary Systems Improvement (ESI); and the ontological framework of BioPsychoSocioTechnical Systems Theory (BPST). Individual application of these components has already yielded systems-level improvements outperforming compliance-driven procedures. Used together, these components offer a multi-level solution for establishing conceptually-guided, measurement-based loops that transcend the restrictions of uninformed policy, supporting stakeholders as they work to systematically eliminate barriers and improve student mental health.

Exploring the Role of Fear, Civic Disengagement, and Economic Disenfranchisement Within Communities that Experience Gun Violence

A growing body of research has documented how gun violence can affect mental and physical health outcomes among adults. Likewise, the literature is also beginning to reveal negative psychological effects related to distress and hypervigilance and sociological implications around diminished community engagement and economic opportunity. However, there remains a need to fully explore the role of fear related to the experience of gun violence. Through a qualitative inquiry consisting of community resident focus groups and community leader interviews, this study examined how participants' perceptions of fear related to their exposures to and experiences of gun violence. The findings highlight the pervasive emotional experience of existing in a fearful, distressed, and/or anxious state within certain communities, and how civic disengagement, neighborhood disconnection, and economic disenfranchisement exist in communities that disproportionately experience violence.

Considerations for Developing a Mental Health Emergency Action Plan for High School Football Programs and Athletic Departments

High school students in the United States are being educated during an unprecedented time of social unrest, public health concerns, and gun violence. High school student athletes can be further challenged by sports-related stressors that may lead to anxiety, burnout, depression, disordered eating, sleep difficulty, performance-based identity concerns, and substance use. High school football players, in particular, are at higher risk of concussion, musculoskeletal injury, and may feel excess pressure to compete from coaches, parents, and peers. One way to address these stressors among high school student athletes is to increase athletic department staff members' awareness of the symptoms of mental health disorders. Increased awareness helps staff members recognize when an athlete is in crisis, as well as respond with an established mental health emergency action plan as needed. In this review article, the authors provide a blueprint by which high school personnel can more readily identify and respond to mental health emergencies among student athletes.

State of the Journal, 2022

The American Journal of Occupational Therapy (AJOT) had another successful year reaching our highest 2-yr impact factor in history (2.813) and regaining our position as the highest ranking occupational therapy journal in the world. Our expanded social media platforms and online resources continue to expand access and help occupational therapy practitioners translate research into practice. The journal's goals moving forward include enhancing opportunities for student involvement, enhancing standards for rigor and reporting, and updating official AJOT documents and resources to reflect best practices for bias-free language and the use of race/ethnicity data in research publications.

The Influence of Disney Musical Practice Course on the Mental Health of Chinese Left-Behind Children from the Perspective of Art Communication

Background

In recent years, with a large number of rural people going out to work, the mental problems of left-behind children have been widely concerned by people from all walks of life.

Objective

The purpose is to improve the teaching quality of music education of left-behind children and solve their unique mental problems.

Methods

Based on the questionnaire survey, the mental state of left-behind children is studied, and the mental problems of left-behind children are intervened based on musical practice classes. First, the left-behind children's mental status is studied. Second, through the questionnaire, the left-behind children's music classroom status is studied and analyzed. Then, the musical classroom intervention experiment is designed to prevent and adjust the left-behind children's mental problems.

Results

The results show that more than 90% of left-behind children spend less than one month with their parents every year. Most of the left-behind children are supervised by their grandparents, and 68% of them have been accompanied by their grandparents for more than nine months. Due to the lack of parents' company, most of the left-behind children are lack of self-confidence and timid and tend to care about others' opinions. Musical practice classes have a good effect on the regulation and prevention of left-behind children's mental problems.

Conclusions

This study uses a questionnaire survey method to explore the new form of left-behind children's music classroom, preventing and regulating left-behind children's mental problems, which provides a reference for the research in related fields.

Trauma and US Minority Children and Youth

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

This paper reviews the literature on the prevalence, risk factors, and effects of traumatic experiences on the mental health outcomes of minority youth in the USA.

RECENT FINDINGS

The USA has an increasing number of children and youth from minority backgrounds. Research reveals that traumatic experiences disproportionately affect minority youth. These experiences include historical/generational trauma, immigration and acculturation stressors, natural and manmade disasters, experiences of discrimination, family violence, and community violence. The COVID-19 pandemic has also disproportionately affected minority youth resulting in illness and hospitalizations. Despite the higher incidence of trauma exposure, minority youth are less likely to access medical and mental health care. These disparities are resulting in increasing rates of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, substance use disorders, and suicide in minority youth. Recognizing and understanding the impact of trauma is critical to the healthy development and successful functioning of minority youth, and to the success of our nation.

Mass Shootings and Their Proximity to a Public or Private School: Protecting the Health and Livelihood of Our Children

INTRODUCTION

Firearm-related violence occupies the third leading age-adjusted mortality rate among all mechanisms of injury. We aim to analyze the distribution of mass shootings in relation to the distance to the nearest public/private school in the United States.

METHODS

A retrospective study investigating mass shootings and proximity to school areas. Information regarding mass shootings was obtained from the Gun Violence Archive. The locations of public/private schools for the 2019-2020 school year were obtained from the National Center for Education Statistics and the Euclidian distance from a mass shooting to the nearest school was measured.

RESULTS

There were 417 mass shootings in 2019 and 610 in 2020. The average distance from a mass shooting to the nearest public/private school was 0.52 miles in 2019 and 0.57 miles in 2020. Most mass shootings occurred within 0.30 miles of a school in 2019 and 0.40 miles in 2020. There was no significant association between average distance of a mass shooting to a public/private school and the population density in 2019 (P = .313) or 2020 (P = .351).

CONCLUSION

The growing number of mass shootings from 2019-2020 was associated with an average distance of <0.60 miles from the location of a mass shooting to a public or private school, highlighting the danger posed to children living and learning in these areas. Mass shootings are prevalent throughout the country and the close proximity of these events to places of learning warrants further investigation into policies and preventive measures aimed at preventing gun violence occurring near schools.