Thanks for joining us here on
9 News Plus I'm Chris Bianchi,
joined by our 90s medical
expert Doctor Phil Cooley,
in light of the recent school
shooting involving Texas.
I wanna get into a little bit about
some of the mental health issues that
may be behind that and maybe potential.
Looks at how this could be
rectified moving forward.
But first of all something we were
talking about right before we got on
here is that the number one cause of death.
And this is a recent phenomenon.
I suppose a horrible one is that the
number one cause of death for children
from ages 1 to 19 is now gun violence.
That that is something relatively new.
Is that correct?
Doctor,
it's so alarming to see this Chris,
because we have been trying so hard
in our kids to get them vaccinated.
You know, make sure they're protected
against infectious disease to get
treatments for childhood cancer.
And all of those pale in comparison to the
number one preventable cause of death,
which has now risen to the top.
Which is really this firearm.
Violence, and that what we've seen comprises
both of homicide as well as suicide,
but largely homicide actually,
and so for the first time it's the
number one cause of death more
than motor vehicle accidents,
more than infections or cancers
or anything else.
Not only that,
we're seeing that the increase the
slope of that increase is really
alarming and occurring at a rate that's
much faster than what's occurring in
the adult population with respect to
homicides or firearm related deaths.
So to me,
this is really a wake up call for.
You know the medical community as
well as parents everywhere to start
to put their heads together and
say how can we start to prevent
these firearm related deaths
now with your expertise as a doctor,
what are some of those things
that can be put together?
Is it an emphasis on mental health?
Is that the main issue here?
You know we talk a lot about mental health,
but it's not all mental health and that's
what we really need to understand because
I think there is almost an unfair,
unfair amount of burden placed on
mental health as a cause of firearm
related deaths now, of course.
Mental health in and of itself needs to
be addressed in our kids and adolescents,
no doubt about that,
but attributing it all to mental
health is almost, in my mind,
a little bit of a cop out and missing
some of the issues that include access
include teaching kids about safety.
You know, those types of things that
we are just not doing a good enough
job of is protecting our kids in other
ways because not all firearm related
deaths are a result of mental health
and attributing all to mental health,
I think, is is unfair.
A question when it comes to US, how do we?
I know this is probably a difficult
question to potentially rectify,
but how do we rank in terms of mental
health compared to other countries
or other developed countries in US?
You know that's a little hard to to assess
because mental health is underdiagnosed
and much of the developing world.
So mental health conditions
sometimes get missed because of
physical health and because of lack
of resources and what have you.
So generally we tend to have some
of the higher incidences of.
Mental health,
but it may be an ascertainment bias
in the sense that we're picking it
up more because we have access to
food and shelter and everything else.
And so we're spending our time sort of
diagnosing the mental health conditions.
But when it comes to mass shootings,
as you know,
we're one of the top countries in the world.
And when it comes to the fallout
from the mass shootings,
because we know that 28% of people who
witness a mass shooting will develop PTSD.
And I'm not just talking
about witnessing it live.
We're talking about even what we do,
which is consuming that information
from the news on television.
Hearing about it, week after week after week.
It just chip away at your mental health,
and even in those people who may not have
a previous history of mental health illness,
they can develop problems,
even anxiety,
eating disorders of substance use.
All of these types of problems as a result
of these shootings that keep occurring.
Is there an idea about how
the communities themselves,
for example Littleton?
They're Columbine,
Aurora after the 2012 year shooting.
Is there an idea about how
the communities themselves
fare in terms of mental health
after an event like this?
You know, as very high incidence of PTSD,
depression and substance use, but also
very good resilience is what we've seen,
and I think the resilience piece of it
comes from what you just said, which is
community as opposed to the individual.
Because when you do have an individual
who's struggling by themselves,
you provide them with the resources,
provide them with that support, you can
really help them overcome some of that.
Now some of it could be waxing and waning,
so once you have a mental health
problem like PTSD, anxiety,
depression, substance use,
you can have periods when you get better
and then periods when you get worse again.
But those can be triggered by
additional things in the future.
But again, for the most part,
a lot of people do end up having issues,
but do end up also bouncing back as
a result of the Community support
and resources.
With that in mind, so you mentioned
earlier on that mental health
may be a bit of a that said.
Are there things we can do
to improve either access and
or care to mental health?
Maybe in these communities,
but maybe as a country overall,
yeah, you know, I think we've
already made some moves towards it,
so we've really started to normalize
mental health problems as of
like a physical health problem.
No one would judge you for
having hypertension or diabetes,
and in the same way people shouldn't
judge you for struggling with
depression or anxiety or PTSD
or social anxiety or whatever.
You're mental health.
Disorder maybe so I think acceptance and
normalization is the first piece of it.
Recognition I think is the other piece of it,
and even in the United States where
we have access to a lot of resources,
mental health conditions are under diagnosed.
Partly because a lot of people
don't end up getting to medical
care to the medical community.
So it's our job as friends, family members.
You know to look out in each other for
behavioral changes that could suggest that
there may be some sort of a warning sign,
especially in our kids.
Because I think kids even lack the
level of insight that some adults have,
where maybe adults themselves could start
to notice behavioral changes in themselves.
But in a child it's a little
bit harder to detect,
so we need to have our radar
up more in our kids,
knowing that not just things like
mass shootings are occurring,
but there's cyber bullying occurring.
There's you know,
a much higher rate of drug abuse,
and kids now it's the third
leading cause of death in kids.
Also a new finding from that report.
Substantially driven,
yeah,
by overdoses and poisonings in fact,
so knowing that our kids have more
access to drugs and our younger kids
could be accidental poisonings and
in our older kids and adolescents
it could be that something is
laced with something else,
particularly fentanyl.
For example,
St drugs that are laced with fentanyl that
can cause accidental overdoses or poisoning.
So I think it's really a good idea
to to look in our home and make
sure that it's safe.
Make sure that it's guarded and then.
Look at our child and say
what does your child need.
Talk to them about it.
Whether that's educating them about
the risks of guns and and drugs,
or whether that's providing them
with a resource in yourself or in a,
you know in your community that they
can turn to if they're struggling,
or if they come up against a
difficult situation.
I think that's something we all
need to get on board with.
I'm admittedly going to wait and
some very tricky waters here,
so bear with me and feel free to
answer this as you May is there a
specific profile for me who tends to
carry something like this out and
or are there big alarm signs saying
that we should look for for again?
Keep an eye on one another to make
sure stuff like this doesn't happen.
Yeah, you know, it's kind of interesting.
The data actually suggests that only
about half of these mass shooters have a
prior history of mental health disorders,
so sometimes it does.
Kind of come out of the blue where somebody
seemingly normal snaps and and can do this.
But again I think at the end of the
day it goes back to if they don't
have the means to carry it out.
It may not happen,
and so I as a physician as a person
and as an American feel very strongly
that even if you're blaming mental
health for these mass shootings,
which we don't really know,
that that's necessarily the cause,
but it could be,
because there are some characteristics of
people that have mental health disorders.
Carry this out,
but even if you're blaming mental
health for these mass shootings,
that's even more reason to restrict
access to means by which a person with a
mental health disorder could carry this out.
So, so I think that gun control has really
got to become a public health issue,
and it's got to be something that we work on,
not just from the government level,
not just a political issue.
Are you left, or are you right?
But how do we protect our kids?
How do we protect each other?
How do we protect each other's
mental health and all roads?
Gonna lead to Rome,
which is that if you take
away the means of doing this,
you're probably going to make
it a little bit safer.
So so there is there are
characteristics in certain individuals,
particularly if they're loners.
They have loneliness,
they have a history of substance abuse.
They have a history of depression or anxiety.
They have a history of childhood abuse.
These were all certain characteristics
that may make somebody higher risk for
potentially carrying out something like this,
but at the same time,
there's no specific profile
and and as we've seen.
It's been a number of different
types of individuals that we've seen,
you know,
participate in acts like this motivated
by a number of different things,
whether that's mental health,
whether that's you know,
hatred, racism, bigotry.
Whether that's anger,
there's all these different things
that can go into it that can make
somebody carry out something like this.
And to be clear, we are the only
country in the world where this stuff
unfortunately regularly happens.
As we all know. So with that in mind,
are there any kind of final thoughts
on this topic about how to?
Address some of these issues
in our society. Well,
you know. I think the news about
the kids really struck me because
our kids are dying from guns as the
number one cause it's not cancer,
not infectious disease,
not any of the other things that
are ancestors have fought for years.
To sort of find scientific cures for.
So I think if that is the case,
it's a preventable cause of
death and for no other reason,
but just take it as a wake up call and say,
OK, I need to educate my children.
We need to limit their access to firearms.
Whether that's access in your home
or access in any other person's
home that they may be going into,
so be mindful of where they're going,
what they're doing,
who they're interacting with,
and you know what they're company is,
and then open the door for them to
really communicate and and talk to you.
You're not going to put the
idea in their head,
which is what a lot of parents worry
about if they talk about drugs or
guns or whatever with their kids,
but in fact the science has shown the
opposite that actually by educating them
about it and being a resource for them,
you actually have made it easier for them
to come to you and talk to you about it.
As opposed to the opposite,
where you think you're protecting
them by not talking to them about
it. Interesting,
I've heard that argument before,
yeah, but very interesting.
I've always learned a lot,
but a difficult but important
topic of conversation.
Doctor Paoli.
Thanks so much for your
time. Thank you.