This article is one of a series of articles produced by Word in Black through support provided by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Word In Black is a collaborative of 10 Black-owned media outlets across the country.
By Kiara Doyal, The Seattle Medium
According to a University of Washington (UW) Medicine News report, between 2017 and 2019, 180 schools in the United States that experienced shooting incidents had significantly fewer health-focused support staff, such as nurses, psychologists, and counselors, and a higher presence of security officers.
Keith Hullenaar, a research fellow at the UW SMART Center and Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center, said the findings, recently published in the journal Preventive Medicine, highlight how the nationwide shortage of school-based mental health professionals may affect schools that experience gun violence.
“With this paper, we wanted to see what staffing profiles look like between schools that did and did not have shootings across the United States,” said Hullenaar. “We found in general that health staffing tended to be lower in schools that had shootings, whereas school policing presence tended to be higher in schools that had shootings. And so, specifically with health staff, we found lower rates of nurses, psychologists, and counselors, for a higher prevalence of school police officers.”
While there is no definitive answer, Hullenaar believes the findings primarily reflect how resources are being allocated in schools.
“It seems like where we are at as a country is that if a shooting occurs, the best way to prevent or address it is potentially through security things like police officers,” Hullenaar said. “And then maybe there is less of a focus on investing in health and mental health, which is also important for recovery. It would be nice if all these places got the resources, and we saw investment in both health and security, and not this sort of one versus the other.”
Many people may believe that having more police officers than nurses or psychologists in schools can send the wrong message — a message that mental health is a lower priority and often overlooked. According to Hullenaar, ensuring safety should encompass all aspects of well-being, including physical, emotional, psychological, and social safety.
“It just seems like our priorities are with security and law enforcement rather than supporting youth health, and it just sends a message that we want to only guarantee safety through physical security rather than emotional safety,” said Hullenaar. “Potentially, it should be about all, because safety is a very big, multi-faceted concept that takes a lot of different supports.”
The study found that schools experiencing shootings had significantly fewer mental health professionals than those that did not. On average, schools without shootings employed 3.7 counselors, 1.0 social workers, and 1.4 psychologists per 1,000 students. In contrast, schools that experienced shootings had just 2.9 counselors, 0.7 social workers, and 0.8 psychologists per 1,000 students. These numbers fall well short of the professional recommendations, which call for four counselors, four social workers, and two psychologists per 1,000 students in K–12 schools.
Given the findings in the report, it’s alarming to consider that society may not treat gun violence as a public health issue.
“If gun violence, whether in schools or otherwise, isn’t a public health problem, then why are so many people dying from it? If it is not a health problem, then why does it lead to physical consequences such as psychosomatic problems? Why are kids who are exposed to gun violence suffering from mental health issues if it is not a public health problem?” Hullenaar said. “The root cause of gun violence in schools is a very big question that we are going to continue to be working on for many more years.”
The findings of the report also raise the question of whether states’ and school districts’ strategies to reduce violence only by employing security staff are meeting that goal, and the paper’s authors noted that comprehensive support for student behavior and mental health is associated with greater school safety.
When asked what he believes we can collectively do to help change the statistics found in the report, Hullenaar said that people often assume simply investing more money into mental health will magically solve the problem, which isn’t entirely true.
“That is the easy solution. Of course, if we could spend as much money as we wanted to, and we didn’t have a shortage of mental health staffing across schools, this would be a perfect solution. Just spend more money, hire more people, and then boom, everything’s solved,” said Hullenaar. “The problem is that there’s not a lot of money being invested into schools right now for mental health. What I think needs to happen is that we need to be able to help schools by leveraging where they’re at, seeing what they have available to them, to more effectively utilize the staff, people, and organizational resources that they have.”
“There need to be systems developed so that everyone can leverage the limited resources that they have, but by working all together,” he concluded.
