One thing I have noticed in my research efforts around the issue of gun violence is how many good ideas there are out there. Ideas that verifiably make a positive impact on communities in the form of the programs that holster those ideas. One such idea is that of violence interruption, which has found success in Chicago, with the Cure Violence initiative (www.cureviolence.org), and in Baltimore with the Safe Streets program (https://health.baltimorecity.gov/safestreets). These programs leverage knowledgeable and caring community members against the scourge of street violence, and have shown marked success of reducing the frequency of shooting incidents. Both programs have seen fluctuations in funding due to the fact that they have to rely primarily on grants.
 
However, these two cases are ultimately success stories. Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh has secured over $5 million for the Safe Streets program through state and city funds and has a goal to increase the number of sites to ten. Cure Violence has expanded into cities such as Philadelphia and New York and claims a 70% violence reduction rate. They were also just ranked #10 NGO in the World by NGO Advisor (https://www.ngoadvisor.net/).
 
But while some initiatives gain success, other do not. Such is life in the realm of donations and grants, not all programs can sustain themselves through the chaos that comes with it. Two examples of youth-led organizations that have tried to improve relations between youth and police, and ultimately had to cease operation due to lack of funding are the New Lens project (http://www.newlens.info/about_new_lens.html) and the Inner Harbor Project (http://www.theinnerharborproject.org/), both from Baltimore City.
 
Ambitious in their scope and successful for a time, both programs relied on youth to be Peace Ambassadors in some sense, and to mediate conflicts before they get out of control. The Inner Harbor Project saw a sharp decrease in the number of arrests and incidents in the community they served. How can we help programs like these maintain their funding?
 
One simple answer is to educate ourselves about the programs that do exist, what their success rates are, and then who to communicate their successes with.

Happy Teacher Appreciation Day everyone! As we reflect on those who have made a lasting impact on every person ever, we ask ourselves, "How can we give back? We understand how caring and patient these folks are, how can we truly pass across our deep feeling of gratitude?"

This year has seen teachers strike in four different states (Kentucky, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona). Why? Stagnating pay, loss of benefits, poor teaching conditions. To show our appreciation for teachers, we should begin by listening to their grievances and being honest about what we can should give to teachers in terms of salary and benefits. Luckily, a lot of data exists on the current situation state-by-state, and we can use this information to give feedback to different states about how well they treat their teachers, and even which teachers are more likely strike in the future given their tough situation. 

                                            Check out this article by The Brookings Institute to find out more!

                  Is your state on the list? They might have difficulty and need a small apple to make things better ;)

Ever wonder what shift is occurring in our schools to make it easier for students to deal with their Adverse Childhood Experiences or Adverse Community Environments (pair of ACEs)? After all, dealing with the ACEs of students helps to alleviate some of the strain of a violent past or environment and assists in breaking the traditional cycle of violence.

Trauma Informed Practices (or TIP) are practices for schools, public health initiatives, mental/behavioral health practices, youth services, and law enforcement to be able to coordinate with the knowledge of normally stigmatized traumas. Some of the practices they have put into place are:

1. Social and Emotional Learning Curriculum: People can experience trauma at any time in life, so being able to give youth the tools to deal with them in the context of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is extremely important. This means curriculum for students and teachers alike. It also means that principals are given the tools to be able to enact practices according to their school's needs.

2. Peace Corner: a much better variant of wearing a dunce cap while sitting alone facing a wall, the "Peace Corner" is a place for students to go to to self-regulate their emotions. They may complete a short questionnaire where they circle which emotion they are feeling overwhelmed by and briefly explain why. This helps students recognize their emotions and develop strategies for managing them.

3. One-on-One Mentorship: sometimes that best resource is a person who has already been through it. Providing a mentor to each and every student is an incredibly valuable way to check in with kids on a regular basis. It helps inform staff about what is going on in the mind's of the students. It can also go a long way to making each student feel connected and reduce their risks of being victimized by violent behavior later on. 

4. Teacher Support: different methods for developing Social and Emotional Learning for teachers can also go a long way. If a teacher is feeling overwhelmed, they may act in an ill-advised manner toward their students or other teachers. Having staff support can help teachers feel confident that their actions towards students and co-workers will always be as positive as possible.
​
A great example comes from Fall Hamilton Elementary school in Nashville, TN: Click here to read and watch!

Ah, the teacher, the unlikely companion in the race to save us from ourselves. We ask a lot of our teachers. They help raise our children, they provide mentorship, they buy supplies, they serve as a therapeutic ear to their students needs. Sometimes, they do this without heat in the classrooms, or without safe drinking water from the fountains.  Indeed, we ask a lot of our teachers, but now they are asking something from us: to LISTEN!

Teachers went on strike in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and most recently Arizona. Further strikes are to occur in Colorado. They are doing so after years of stagnate wages and lack of proper upward adjustments in education funding. And no, not all school districts are created equal. The strikes come from the bottom percentiles in terms of losing out on education funds since 2008:

                                                             Read this Article from Vox to find out more!

From my experience as both a student and a teacher, I can tell you how important proper funding is. As a student in Northern Virginia, I went to a top notch high school with plenty of diversity, arts, sports, and academics. Our buildings were under constant construction while I attended, but they turned the school into a remarkable campus with all the amenities.

As a teacher in Baltimore City, however, I experienced a shortage of chairs, which led to students sitting on the radiator, which broke the radiator so everyone had to wear coats in the classroom during the cold days. The Math Cart, which we had to use to give state sanctioned tests, would have to be manually hauled up and down the stairs when the elevator wasn't working due to frequent electric outages and sometimes small fires. The water fountains could not be used for fear of lead poisoning. The bathrooms had stalls without doors.

It is amazing the difference in the quality of learning when schools have the resources they need to conduct business. Most people agree, according to a poll on the recent teacher strikes:

                                                       Read another article from Vox on the public opinion poll!

People are listening, are politicians?

I feel like I never graduated. April 16, 2007 changed the lives of many at Virginia Tech after a troubled student took the lives of 32 of his classmates and teachers. I was taking a Geology test at the time. I remember having a bad case of Senioritis. So bad that the night before the shooting, having skipped Geology for almost two weeks straight, I saw the syllabus reminding me of my test and thought with passion, "I would do anything for this semester to be over..." My passionate thought was answered in the cruelest of ways, a seldom confessed fact that has burned regret in my brain.

After the test was completed, I remember going to the library to study for a Quantum Mechanics exam that I had coming up. As I entered the elevator, I saw a sign next to the doors that read something like..."there has been a shooting on campus, two people are in the hospital and a suspect is in custody." A man taking the elevator with me commented, "If they just allowed guns on campus, this would never happen." I remember thinking that he was right, but that the same was true if no one had a gun, those two arguments clearly cancel each other out. This began my exploration into the Public Health and Prevention Science world of research, which is why I work for Reaching Out to Other Together (ROOT) and The Least Recognized Gun Violence Expert in the United States of America, Kenny Barnes Sr. 

​After sometime in the library, my phone began to receive texts like wild fire. "Are you ok?" people asked me. "Of course," I replied. Didn't they know that it was a contained incident? Then there was an announcement that the library was shutting down and that we were not allowed to leave, there was an active shooter on campus. Several of the other students had laptops and began to watch the news feed. "9 dead at Virginia Tech," the reports said. "16 dead in a massive school shooting," came a little bit later. The number grew and grew. By the time they let us out, some two hours later, the number reached 28. By the time I walked home, it was 32. With the death of the shooter, the total death count became 33, with an additional 23 who were injured. 

In the aftermath, we were told that our grades would not go below what they were at the time of the shooting. Counselors reached out to us to offer us free therapy. I graduated, but I feel like I didn't.

After the Parkland shooting, much attention was rightfully given to students who had a lot to say. After all, the nature of school shootings involves students the most! These shootings tend to be former or current students taking out their anger on classmates and teachers, with the majority of victims being the students themselves. Common sense gun reform to help reduce the number of fatalities is growing ever more popular on the grassroots level, with students organizing and helping to create better scenarios and more open debate.

The most recent news along these lines has been from the Baltimore City Pubic School system, in which this morning, a large group of students from various schools got together to walk out of their classes in protest. Their demands are point and specific: enact a "red flag law" that would make it possible for the judiciary to seize guns from individuals who are deemed a risk to themselves and others, and to enact legislation to reduce the amount of high-capacity gun magazines. 

Given the students' ability to clearly state their demands, to clearly protest in a peaceful way (they have also developed a code of conduct for fellow protesters), and to follow through with their plans, there is a high likelihood that they will be received well. 

Another issue, of course, is more mental health resources in schools, which will serve as a preventative measure against gun violence. This, as I have argued before, is one of the most important aspects of fighting off gun violence. As mental illness risks increase in the age of smart phones, it is ever more important to invest in the Social and Emotional health of our youth. 

                              Read more about the Student Walk-out in this article by the Baltimore Sun.

The initial reaction to the most recent mass shooting, this one at a high school Florida, followed all the predictable fanfare that these things tend to follow. People upset, arguments occur, nothing really happens other than a festering anger that has been building in parents and children alike to address a clear danger in public spaces. But then, a slightly different feel came about. It seems the other students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida have been given a bit of a voice and have answered admirably.

Their healing on display for everyone, surviving such an event makes therapy a necessity. Sometime after the Virginia Tech shooting occurred in 2007, I recall an administrative push to reach out to literally EVERY student and offer free counseling services. Such a thing could be a positive move for the felled Florida high school, and chances are they are already working hard at providing such things. 

In addition to the clear need to facilitate healing practices among those directly and indirectly affected by this tragedy, there is an underlying need to provide adequate resources to people BEFORE shootings like this occur. The perpetrator of this, the worst high school shooting in the States, had issues with Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder and Autism, according to a report by the Washington Post. Glaring warning signs presented themselves, so glaring that even the FBI became involved. 

To match, the school's counseling resources were very limited, not meeting the prescribed school counselor to student ratio of 250:1. So when the young troubled man came in with the anger and rage that teenage-hood can sometimes bestow on a broken heart, it was already too late. It is reasons like this that the majority of Americans now believe that inadequate mental health resources contribute more to mass shootings than gun control. With a suicide to homicide ratio of 3:2, I tend to agree. There are not enough therapists in the world to deal with this...

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/abc-and-washington-post-poll-finds-americans-blame-mental-health-more-than-gun-control-for-shootings.html
  

 Here we go again. Another day, another mass shooting. This type of thing has occurred with such regularity that the American populace is slowly becoming numbed to it. Yesterday, a gun man, working alone, took out 26 innocent church-goers before being killed himself. Here is an article from the Washington Post about the incident:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/11/06/investigators-hunt-for-motive-in-texas-church-shooting-as-the-grieving-spans-generations/

Perhaps there will be a little bit of conversation about gun rights, surely this will take up a day or two of our 24 hour news cycle.

Will we take actionable steps towards changing things though? Probably not. It does not seem to be in our blood at this point. Mostly because we haven’t the faintest idea of what to do about it. It would require a comprehensive strategy of identifying non-violence groups in neighborhoods and mapping their assets. Then facilitating the development of a local, community based strategies that include a list of actionable steps towards this common goal. It requires significant evidence to be collected in order to pin point where the requisite resources should be applied.

This “all hands one deck” type of strategy that leverages existing mental, behavioral, and public health resources is rarely discussed. Instead, we meekly suggested SOMETHING should be done, and that that SOMETHING should require a law that limits the sales of guns and provides larger background checks, etc. The problem is, most of these individuals claiming responsibility for these heinous acts would still slip through the cracks, even with new laws in place. Additionally, the black market for gun sales is, and always will be, a very real issue.

So let’s take a moment to reflect on what actually needs to be done, because we are due for another “shocking” mass shooting in three weeks or so. Harnessing the power of our mental, behavioral, and public health resources is crucial, but we will probably not hear about this from the major news outlets, we will have to make this happen on our own. 

There is almost an agreement. There is an acknowledgment on both side of the gun control argument that bump stocks, the technology that can convert a legal assault rifle to an illegal automatic assault rifle, should be banned. The only question is, how?
 
The NRA feels that the authority lies with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF). However, a legal expert for the ATF, Rick Vasquez, has already deemed the issue legal from their standpoint. You see, a bump stock does not make a gun “fully automatic” in the eyes of the technical expert. Therefore, it cannot be considered an illegal gun.
 
Others believe that Congress should be more explicit with their automatic weapons ban and include technologies that can convert semi-automatic weapons to fully automatic weapons just like the bump stock. This would be a more inclusive piece of legislation that recognizes how conversions can increase the lethality of a mass shooting.
 
Either way, it seems that we can all agree that bump stocks are a tool that make something legal, into something illegal and more lethal. And on that note, it seems that because a bump stock is not a gun, its manufacturers can be sued for loses attributed to its sale (third party injury is usually protected when it comes to gun manufacturers, by the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act).
 
Of course, this may limit the lethality of mass shootings, but it still does not get to the ROOT cause. What actually caused this man to walk into a hotel, perch up on the 32nd floor, and indiscriminately shoot concert-goers? Proactive solutions will always be more effective than reactive solutions, but those solutions are difficult when the man appears to have no motive other than some perverse thrill he wanted to give himself upon his Earthly Exit.
 

As we come to the end of May, it is important to remember one more time that this month has been Mental Health Awareness Month (http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/may/). It is a time to recognize the struggles that many face simply getting on with their day-to-day lives, and reflect on our own mental health challenges. An abundance of research now exists about the role of our behaviors in diagnosing and correlating mental illness. These behaviors can sometimes be linked to the environment. Therefore, mindfully changing the environment can help change a behavior.
 
When diagnosing a mental illness (https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/warning-signs-of-mental-illness), doctors tend to look at how a person is feeling, a person’s cognitive functioning, and their behaviors. The affect of an individual can indicate a person’s emotions on a deep level. However, if it is not self-reported, it is communicated in terms of behaviors: “My friend/family member is acting cold and withdrawn.” Likewise, a person’s cognitive functioning requires a description of doing: “He couldn’t even remember his own phone number.” These behaviors coalesce into a rounded form of information that can lead to a formal psychiatric diagnosis.
 
Behaviors, when performed over and over, become habits. Habits such as sleeping too much are linked to depression (http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/guide/physical-side-effects-oversleeping#1/). Habits such as sleeping too less are linked to psychosis (http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/serendipupdate/effects-sleep-deprivation-brain-and-behavior/). And of course, habits such as substance abuse become their own diagnosis (https://www.centeronaddiction.org/).
 
These habits are all made possible by the schedule a person keeps because of their position in life. Someone who has to work a full-time job and then go to school every night might have a tougher time getting the sleep they need. Someone who works from home may be getting too much sleep. These habits are made possible partially by a person’s employment. Of course, we all have the position in life to change our own behavior. Author Charles Duhigg writes about how to change a behavior given the science of habit loops in his book “How Habits Work” (http://charlesduhigg.com/how-habits-work/).
 
So if you are feeling depressed, consider scheduling some time for a little exercise. If you are having weird thoughts about your neighbor, try getting a good night’s sleep. And if you’re having trouble with an addiction, be it coffee or heroin, try replacing the behavior with something more healthy but still reward-rich. And of course, have a good life the entire way!