School Shootings and Bullying

School Shootings: How to solve Bullying and Violence within Schools
School shootings have become something of an epidemic in modern day America. Like the flu, they seem to arrive every season, every year, sometimes appearing in deadlier strains than seen in previous appearances. Following an outbreak, authorities scramble to find ways to effectively address the phenomenon, but, unable to identify the source of the problem, they invariably settle upon superficial or politically correct solutions that serve only to tamper down the furor and clamor of communities that rise up in protest against the ease with which it all appears to happen: child is bullied at school, child buys guns, child takes revenge with a stockpile of weapons, an AK-47 with a bump stock, an arsenal that would make a Marine blush. Yet, in spite of the nearly universal knee jerk reaction that inevitably occurs following an episode of school violence, the band-aid of banning guns will not fix the kids who are being driven to vengeance: their issues run much deeper than the black market (where guns will always be available no matter what laws Congress chooses to pass). Their issues are related to mental health—and the solution to the problem of school shootings is one that requires more than just the passing of more restrictive legislation. It is one that requires patient understanding of the facts surrounding the mental health conditions of young people in schools today. It is one that requires awareness about the fact, for instance, the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are almost invariably found in the background of the child involved in the school shooting. SSRIs are prescribed medication for mental disorders: the side effects, one can surmise, can be deadly when pressure and stress build up, and recourse to help from a counselor on the scene is not available. This paper will show that the solution to school shootings is not the banning of guns but rather one that focuses on identifying and treating the mental and behavioral issues of troubled teens—one that is conducted, preferably, without the use of SSRIs.
Today’s schools are more and more resembling prisons: there are bars and gates around the windows and grounds, armed guards at the doors, metal detectors at the doorways. Every so often something goes wrong: the alarms sound, shots ring out, cameras and police and medical emergency personnel arrive on the scene. Another shooting has occurred and the calls for Congress to “do something” to make schools safer are heard around the nation. As Laura Jaffee notes, for instance, “in June 2016, Congressional Democrats held a sit-in on the floor of the House of Representatives in an alleged effort to curb gun violence.” Democrats, here, represented the common demonstration of emotion that is so often seen whenever a school shooting takes place. Few actually stand up to demand that mental health be more openly discussed or that the solutions put forward by Big Pharma be rethought in the light of so many school shooters having their brains scrambled by SSRIs. In fact, Peter Breggin shows that SSRIs “commonly cause or exacerbate a wide range of abnormal mental and behavioral conditions” (31)—not the least being explosive and cold-blooded violence. Yet instead of discussing or investigating better ways to treat children with mental and behavioral health issues, the pharmaceutical industry is turned to by “health care for everyone” proponents as they Big Pharma were the cure rather than part of the problem, which is what it is in reality. SSRIs often take a bad situation and make it worse, and when the facts of the case are uncovered, the kids from Columbine to Sandy Hook all have a history of taking SSRIs (Kauffman).
The fact of the matter is that the drugs are not working and the legislation to ban guns will not work either. Gun laws will not fix the mental and behavioral health issues that children are displaying with more and more frequency as a result of destabilized families and communities, cultural anemia, and a lack of proper intervention to help them sort through their problems and provide them with the necessary cognitive behavioral therapy that can get them on the right path again. Instead, the only type of example they are given is that might makes right: the bullying they see at school is what they respond to; they feel bullied, so they bully back (they are given no other example of how to behave). Dawn Maynen rightly points out that “this type of behavior is learned and internalized by our youth and repeated in a generational transmission to their children, further reinforcing the socioeconomic disparity and providing a venue for future bullying to occur” (1631). Bullying is the only intervention they know. It is so common that parents, teachers, and students do not even recognize it except in extreme forms. They take the bully mentality for granted because it is, in fact, part of the modern culture. Even those of the supposed “tolerant” side of the political spectrum demonstrate it whenever they meet a position that opposes their own. So Congress can try to take away the guns—but that will not take away the bullying mentality present among the youth. To get rid of that, a real intervention is required—and that means real professionals with the knowledge and skills required to treat and to give and therapy to young persons with mental and behavioral issues have to get involved.
What is needed is professional counseling. Schools should have not just one but rather dozens of counselors in their employment. They must realize that the problem is that serious: school violence is now becoming as rampant as the flu and far more dangerous and unless the mental and behavioral health of school children is assessed and supported by trained counselors, schools are going to consider to be befuddled by the random outbreaks of violence, whether guns are used or not. The authorities took away guns in England—and those committed to violence have taken to using other means to express themselves, whether those means involve homemade bombs, knives, machetes, or cars. In the U.S., it would be the same. Guns are not the problem—the mental health of our children is what is the problem—and their mental health is not receiving the attention it needs. If we want to solve the problem of school shootings, we have to look at the cognitive and behavioral processes that are feeding this epidemic—the bully mentality exacerbated by a drug problem that has been institutionalized within our health care system in place of real, preventive medicine like cognitive behavioral therapy. Of course, the latter takes time, takes patience, takes commitment from one person to another—and in America, so many people seem so bent on moving at a thousand miles an hour to deliver that knee jerk reaction that it is unlikely that these kids will actually get the help they need. Solutions are not easy: they do not come in neat little boxes or bills rammed through the Senate. They come with time, with devotion, with care, and with understanding.
In conclusion, the problem of school shootings will only get worse from here on out unless the problem of culture and of care is addressed. This is the heart of the problem and the one that needs to be discussed more openly. Our children are suffering from a culture that has lost both its heart and its mind, and when they lash out, they are demonstrating that fact more and more openly. Schools need counselors because these kids need counseling: their mental health is what’s suffering; forget the Constitution; forget the SSRIs. These kids need real help from real human beings who are ready and willing to give it to them, one-on-one. Their hearts and their minds need to be mended, and unless that kind of intervention is given, or is at least made more available at schools, where kids are essentially immersed in a world of bullying and oppression (evident from the bars and gates to the peers who learn from others that the only way to treat someone you don’t like or disagree with is to beat them down).
Summary
School shootings are a symptom of an underlying problem that cannot be solved by gun laws or by pharmaceutical intervention. Instead, counseling is needed to help teens address the underlying issues of their mental and behavioral health issues. Schools must be willing to provide this type of counseling—just as they are willing to provide gates, bars, police presence and metal detectors in their halls. A school without counselors and without an intention to be able to identify the bully culture that harms kids is a school that is asking for trouble. Today’s advocates of banning guns (every time another shooting occurs) are missing the point: the problem is not the gun—the problem is the person holding the gun. And the problem even runs deeper than any one person. The problem is cultural. The culture of America has been hopped up drugs from Big Pharma, on pop songs from the culture industry scorned by the Critical Theorists; and the children imbibe this culture as though it were water. Stricter gun laws may take away the weapons, but those who suffer from the bully culture will find other means to take their revenge. That is why the mental health of these children has to be addressed. That is where the real work needs to be done. Only when the counselors begin to intervene at this level, will a difference begin to be made.
Works Cited
Breggin, Peter R. “Suicidality, violence and mania caused by selective serotonin reuptake
inhibitors (SSRIs): A review and analysis.” International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine, vol. 16, no. 1 (2004): 31-49.
Jaffee, Laura Jordan. “Rethinking School Safety in the Age of Empire: Militarization,
Mental Health, and State Violence.” Disability Studies Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 1 (2018). http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/5230/4878
Kauffman, Joel M. “Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) drugs: More risks than
benefits.” Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, vol. 14, no. 1 (2009): 7-12.
Maynen, Dawn. “Jessie Klein: The Bully Society: School Shootings and the Crisis of
Bullying in America’s Schools.” Journal of Youth Adolescence, vol. 42 (2013): 1630-1632.