Exposure to gun violence linked to widespread psychological distress in US adults

Psychology research has consistently emphasized the adverse effects of enduring or witnessing violent acts, showing that exposure to different forms of violence can increase the risk of developing various mental health conditions. Many of the most gruesome violent incidents that take place worldwide involve the use of firearms.

In the United States, where firearms are widely accessible, gun violence has become a public health issue, as tens of thousands of fatal and non-fatal gun injuries are recorded across the nation every year. Many people in the U.S. are exposed to firearm violence at least once throughout their lives and need to live with the physical and/or psychological consequences of this exposure.

Past studies have shown that both being injured during a shooting and witnessing someone else getting shot can contribute to the development of mental health disorders, the most notable of which are depression, panic disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Gaining further insight into the psychological consequences of gun violence exposure is thus of crucial importance, as it could help to devise more effective interventions aimed at supporting victims and their communities following a shooting.

Researchers at Hamline University’s Violence Prevention Project Research Center, Metropolitan State University and University of Colorado-Boulder recently carried out a study aimed at better understanding the effects of exposure to mass and non-mass shootings on the mental health of U.S. citizens.

Their findings, published in Nature Mental Health, suggest that most individuals who are directly or indirectly exposed to violent acts performed with firearms experience some degree of psychological distress.

“Gun violence exposure is a major public health issue in the United States, yet its mental health consequences remain insufficiently examined,” wrote Jillian K. Peterson, James A. Densley and David C. Pyrooz in their paper.

“This study investigates the short- and long-term psychological self-reported impacts of lifetime gun violence exposure using a cross-sectional survey of 10,000 respondents designed to be representative of U.S. adults, administered online by YouGov in January 2024.”

As part of their study, Peterson, Densley and Pyrooz analyzed the responses of a large sample of U.S. citizens who completed a survey administered via the polling platform YouGov. The survey respondents answered a series of questions about their previous exposure to gun violence, as well as their feelings and experiences following any incident they were involved in or witnessed.

Notably, the survey considers various types of exposure to gun violence, including being part of a community in which a mass shooting occurred, as well as being a victim of a non-mass shooting. The latter category included different experiences, including being threatened with a firearm, being shot at but not struck and being injured by a shooter.

“20.1% of respondents reported a mass shooting in their community, 18.3% had been threatened with a firearm, and 2.2% and 2.4% were injured in mass and non-mass shootings, respectively,” wrote Peterson, Densley and Pyrooz in their paper.

“Between 58.6% and 94.4% reported mental health consequences across exposure types, with younger individuals and women particularly vulnerable. While mass shootings corresponded with greater psychological distress, the long-term impacts, including post-traumatic stress, were reported at a higher rate following non-mass shootings.”

When they analyzed the data they collected, the researchers found that most individuals exposed to gun violence later experienced some degree of psychological distress. People who were injured in mass shootings reported the highest rates of depression and panic attacks compared to those exposed to other forms of gun violence. Nonetheless, approximately 2 out of 5 respondents who were exposed to non-mass shootings reported that this had long-term effects on their mental health.

In the future, the findings of this recent study could inform the development of new trauma-informed interventions and therapeutic strategies for supporting both individuals and communities after they are exposed to gun violence. Moreover, they could inspire more research that also examines the experiences of individuals who have no physical injuries following a shooting but might nonetheless suffer psychologically after witnessing an incident or being threatened with a gun.

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