![]() Mass shootings often result in a particularly difficult kind of grief known as traumatic grief. Additionally, Littleton says that recovery can be made harder by a prevalent misconception that grieving is a linear, incremental process, one that can be completed within the months or years after a tragedy. In this sense, having survived or having been directly affected by a mass shooting is certainly “a risk factor” for suicide, says Heather Littleton, a professor of psychology at East Carolina University who specializes in recovery from trauma. adult population will experience PTSD symptoms at some point in their lives.) Research has also linked PTSD to suicide, particularly when it’s paired with depression. ![]() (By comparison, 7 to 8 percent of the U.S. Some 28 percent of people who survive mass shootings in the United States develop post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the National Center for PTSD at the U.S. And in 2008, eight months after the shooting at Virginia Tech, a 21-year-old student named Daniel Kim took his own life in an act that his parents said was linked to the shooting. Greg Barnes, a Columbine student whose best friend died in the massacre, committed suicide a few weeks after its first anniversary. Carla Hochhalter, the mother of a student injured in the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, took her own life six months afterward family members later stated that the tragedy had exacerbated her preexisting clinical depression. The death by suicide of someone connected to a school shooting is, unfortunately, a familiar story line. Jeremy Richman, 49, was a neuropharmacologist. The identity of the other Stoneman Douglas student, reported to be a sophomore boy, has not been released. ![]() Sydney Aiello was 19 and a student at Florida Atlantic University, and she was a close friend of Meadow Pollack, who died in the Stoneman Douglas massacre. Two were survivors of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida the third was the father of a first grader killed in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Over a period of just 10 days this month, three people directly affected by school shootings committed suicide. For support and resources, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 80, or text 741-741 for the Crisis Text Line. If you are in danger of acting on suicidal thoughts, call 911. ![]() Editor’s Note: If you are having thoughts of suicide, please know that you are not alone. ![]()
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