School Shootings in The U.s. and The Turama of Losing a Child

There are a lot of school shootings happening in the U.S. today. The death of a child is a traumatic event that can have long-term effects on the lives of parents. When a school shooting happens, parents are the ones who get anxious about their children. School personnel can develop psychological strategies for parents to make sure their children are ready for such a situation by sending them email about school shooting warnings, which makes parents think school is a dangerous place to allow their children to go. In light of the significance of child death, it is a traumatic experience for parents. The death of a child is one of the most painful events that can happen in a safe and unexpected place such as school. Mass shootings can result in over a dozen murdered students and a multitude of emotionally and physically scarred survivors. Their families, friends, and classmates will likely face lifelong consequences by carrying short- and long-term memories of devastation, violence, and suffering, simply because as a society we have not done enough to stop mass shootings.

Anxiety about school shootings has become really common in America in recent years. According to Rachel Ehmke, an author and senior writer for Childmind, “parents tend to worry about school shootings more than their children do. Even though they’re the ones going into school every day, I just don’t hear a lot of kids worrying about it”. This explains how school shootings can affect the parents more often. We often focus on the number of deaths and injuries of mass shootings in schools, but it is also about how it causes psychological casualties, which far exceed the physical ones. Parents are afraid to lose their loved ones which makes it a hard decision for them to send their child to school when they are not sure they will survive.

School shootings are horrific and scary and important, so they dominate the media and therefore our minds, and we think of them as much bigger threats than they are. Parents are sometimes afraid to bring up school shootings with their children because they don’t want to scare them, but when it happens, it has lasting ramifications for each family and also impacts relationships among community members, including parents. According to the Daily Beast News article by Caitlin Dickson, which quoted an inside look of what was going on inside of the families who lost their loved ones:

It’s hard to put a finger on what’s changed because it’s become my life. It’s almost difficult to remember what it was like prior to this event (school shooting). We obviously will never get over it; none of the parents will ever get over it. Anything can trigger a memory of things we used to do with our son that we’ll never do again.

She interviews a couple of parents to prove the pain and the scar of losing a child is just as fresh as the day it happened to these parents. It shows these school shootings psychologically affect them. School shootings are not an easy issue to let happen; it does not just take away one person’s life in the family, but it destroys the whole family and community.

Mass shootings do leave not only physical injuries but also psychological injuries that require healing, but the trauma of a mass shooting for parents can potentially result in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, or other mental health issues that can continue to affect a person’s life drastically. While the parents will suffer symptoms of trauma that include flashbacks, anxiety, sadness, insomnia, fear, and anger, these signs will start to fade over time as they start re-engaging in activities. However, for some, it may get worse, leading to depression or PTSD. (Maybe a little more detail in this paragraph about the psychological effects. The definition of mental illness is when there is an extended disturbance in someone's thoughts, emotions and behavior that decreases that person's ability to cope with daily stress and challenges in their life along with the ability to function and carry out their usual personal relationships.

Most people would agree that losing a child is terrible, but is losing a child in a school shooting worse than a child who dies from cancer or an illness? If a child is diagnosed with cancer, the parent knows what is going to happen to them, but when a parent sends them to school, they expect she/he will get educated, not be sent to die.The fear of children dying in their classrooms has become a very hard fact for parents to accept. But dying in a hospital room is not an unexpected fact for them. Denise Witmer in his article stated: “parents who have lost a child, it makes no sense for life to end at such a young age particularly when the death is sudden and without warning.” Witmer is trying to say it is really a different experience for parents who lose their children suddenly without any warning and those parents who are mentally ready and know their child’s physical body is ready to shut down. They rest of their lives will be hard for these parents, and they will start to live with guilt, asking questions like “Why did I send my son or daughter to such a place?” This guilt results in anxiety and affects parents psychologically in different ways than regular grief.

Kids go to school to learn and get their education. However, schools are not a safe place to get an education anymore due to them being shot up by either the kids in them or the shooters who come from outside the school. There are many reasons why kids or adults will do this ,but there are also many reasons how we can stop kids or adults from doing this. There are multiple ways to stop and prevent school shootings from happening, but our way to stop school shootings from happening is to have an increase in security in schools, more counselors and stricter gun laws. An increase in security, such as cameras and more security guards at the scene, could stop shootings from starting or stop it from happening at all. Studies show that some school shooters have mental issues or they are being bullied, and greater counselors could help those kids deal with their issues and get rid of all of their negative thoughts or feelings that one has. Our last way to stop school shootings is to have stricter gun laws, and to do this people who want to purchase guns need to be a higher age to own a firearm and have a stronger background check to prevent gun access to a minor. Saving them is our job because children are the future of our nation, so educating them in the correct manner is a must. However, situations like this are destroying the basic education system of our nation. Future parents are afraid of sending their child to school as it is becoming a risky situation and authorities are having difficulty in stopping the effect.

The second solution for those parents who have already faced this turama of losing a child in a very unfortunate way, is to being social and join some other parents who experience the same thing would be better to talk with them and share the story of each other. We can do much about them because mental health problems can affect the way you think, feel and behave and can feel just as bad, or worse, as any other physical illness but they only help we can do for them is to private them good medication in order to help them and a good therapy. Connecting with someone who understands what they are going through and can relate sometimes makes youth feel less alone. Support workers and support groups have activities to help aid parents through recovery or just talk things out.