New Pa. AG report looks at the impact of gun violence on teen mental health

Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry has released a report on the impact gun violence has on the mental health of teens throughout the state in an effort to help schools improve how they handle these issues with students.

On Tuesday, in releasing the report, entitled TeenTALK, Henry discussed how she spend time with students in four districts throughout the state -- Philadelphia, McKeesport, Hazelton, and Steelton-Highspire -- in order to find what issues are on the minds of teenagers and how they feel instances of gun violence have impacted their lives.

"Our children are dealing with the destruction that guns cause nearly everyday," Henry said. "We must do what we can to support them in response to their trauma and their fear."

She said her office wanted to launch this report at the end of the school year, and during June as it's gun violence awareness month, as a way to give schools time to read and review the report before finding out how some of the findings could be used in their districts.

"We hope that every school district in this great commonwealth sees something in this report that they can add to what they are already doing, build on and develop," she said.

She said that in her meetings with students in ninth through twelfth grades, Henry learned that they have concerns over transparency over gun violence from school officials -- especially as incidents occur -- as well as have hopes to improve conflict resolution and address fears of retaliation in cases of gun violence.

"These were student led discussions," she said. "We sat in a circle and these students shared with me their fears and concerns."

Some students talked about their lived experiences of losing family members and other loved ones, and many expressed frustration with having to adapt to gun violence as a too-common occurrence in their lives, Henry noted in a statement on the report.

In fact, so far this year, according to the city's controller's office, 105 teenagers and others under the age of 18 were victims of gun violence -- 17 of these juveniles died.

Henry said, a recurring topic in the ongoing discussions was that students who have experienced the trauma of gun violence instances in their own lives feel they need more time from school officials in order to process the incidents.

"These students want and need time to process the trauma of the gun violence they are seeing in their own lives,"

She said that students identified three areas where schools should focus on improvement: better communication between students and officials, more options for mental health services and more funding and resources for programs that can help address these issues, like social emotional learning and conflict resolution.

A full copy of the report is available here.