Psychologist: Fear of school shootings affecting students' brains
Las Vegas, Parkland, Fla., Pittsburgh, Thousand Oaks, Calif. – there are enough mass shootings now that they are simply referred to by where they happened.
The constant threat of violence has an impact on people, especially children and teens, according to a Raleigh psychologist.
"If you think about the level of anxiety that students and teachers and parents and the community and first responders live under, thinking any noise could be an active shooter is really going to have an impact on people's state of anxiety and their general day," Tina Lepage said.
Children, whose brains are still developing, can be the most affected, Lepage said.
"I am worried," said Kelsey Jones, a student at Topsail High School. "The whole world is being inflicted by everything."
Loud bangs echoed around Topsail High early Friday, and the students, teachers and staff inside thought they were under fire.
Pender County Sheriff Carson Smith said it sounded like an active shooter at the school.
"I said a prayer on the way," Smith said. "You think, I hope this is not our turn. I hope this is not something happening in this county."
Local law enforcement officers rushed into the building and went room to room in search of danger. They later found the source of the sound was a malfunctioning water heater.
"The gas that was leaking into a chamber was setting off explosions rapid fire, back to back," Smith said.
The danger was not real, but the fear around it certainly was.
Likewise, several students at Athens Drive High School in Raleigh received threatening messages Friday. Authorities investigated, but it turned out to be a hoax.
Lepage said real and perceived threats like these leave a mark on us. Fear is a new normal for students – something their parents didn't necessarily know growing up – and it can affect the developing brain and how young people deal with stress in the future.
"If this keeps up, we are going to see long-term impacts on society," she said.
Parents can reassure their children that most days are perfectly safe, Lepage said. But a long-term solution involves making threats of mass violence a thing of the past, she said.
