Personal Perspective: We are suffering from hypervigilance, as well as learned helplessness.
It was my daughter’s first day of kindergarten, and the early autumn air had a hint of crispness to it. As I waited in the long school pickup line, my daughter’s father made an offhand comment about the necessity of school security guards.
“Somebody shot up a Catholic school in Minneapolis today,” I replied without a hint of, as if I was describing the weather. Every year, there are signs of autumn’s return: a peep of red or orange in the trees, apple picking, the return of the pumpkin spice latte, and, in the United States, the academic year’s first school shooting. In the face of such routine violence, we have become I was in middle school when the Columbine massacre happened, and I distinctly remember watching the footage of children jumping through the windows in hopes of escape. It seemed as if the entire nation was outraged, stunned, and horrified. Pundits were quick to point fingers in all directions: at Marilyn Manson, Prozac, and inadequate gun control policies. It was all anyone could talk about for weeks and months. When kindergartners were slain in Sandy Hook slightly over a decade later, it seemed as if we had finally reached a tipping point. That shooting came and went, with thoughts and prayers and little meaningful action. A decade later, we saw the carnage at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde and criticized the lackluster police response. The police were hesitant to intervene in a situation that we regularly train our students and teachers for in lockdown and active shooter drills. I am saddened to admit that I don’t have the same level of outrage today. Today, when I see these headlines, I don’t open the article. I am not surprised. I am no longer horrified. I am numb. As a nation, we have resigned ourselves to sending our children to school without a social contract that assumes they will not be shot. Perhaps we have reached a tipping point, but not the one we had hoped for. We have tipped over into despondence and despair. I am a mental health researcher. Whenever a mass shooting happens, the media looks for a motive—and mental illness is trotted out as a scapegoat. Never mind that people with serious mental illnesses are much more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. Never mind that mental health funding is consistently on the chopping block. Of course, perpetrators of gun violence are not immune to having mental health problems. But a society that allows terrorism via gun violence to become so commonplace as not even to warrant a reaction is not a society in which one’s mental health can flourish. Gun violence is the. We are oversaturated with a news cycle that deals in horror, and we are drowning in policy debates that miss the whole point. There are no signs of school shootings slowing down. In fact, in the time since I started writing this, another school shooting and the public murder of a political activist have occurred. We are once again locked in the debate-but-do-nothing cycle. Perhaps, we can ask our neighbors how they are doing and actually wait to hear their answer. We can reach out if we are struggling. And if we own guns, we can keep them safely locked up. Our collective mental health depends on the measures we take.Whatever your goals, it’s the struggle to get there that’s most rewarding. It’s almost as if life itself is inviting us to embrace difficulty—not as punishment but as a design feature. It's a robust system for growth.Self Tests are all about you. Are you outgoing or introverted? Are you a narcissist? Does perfectionism hold you back? Find out the answers to these questions and more with Psychology Today.
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