Red Flag Warning
In weather-speak, a red flag warning is issued when conditions are ripe for fire combustion. Many law enforcement officials in Florida have described school shooter Nikolas Cruz as displaying all the “red flags” of a troubled youth, yet no one seemed to speak up enough to prevent the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. This reflection extends writings I have recently done that describes trauma and traumatized systems as an invisible fire, an engulfing threat that feels real and urgent to some but that is often hard to fight, or convince others of its reality. In light of the rhetoric emerging from this newest tragedy, I argue we need a different kind of “red flag warning,” one addresses the fire before having to shadow box, as it were, its invisible flames.
There’s a need to have a more nuanced, complex conversation about the role of “mental health” in mass shootings. Public reactions to the most recent school shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida seem stuck--some circle back around to older musings about creating a national registry of mentally ill people, others frame “prevention” in terms of ramping up community efforts to speak out when so-called warning signs manifest (“if you see something, say something” urges Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi). This morning, I even heard Florida Senator Dennis Baxley propose to allow school officials to designate people to carry weapons; they would be placed with “precision” so that if a threat unfolds, they’ll be able to neutralize it faster than police (NPR “Weekend Edition” 2/17/18). In my own echo chamber, most decry the quick, knee-jerk tendency of many politicians, especially Donald Trump, to decontextualize a complex situation by naming the problem as a “mental health issue.” Many mental health professionals after events like these point to research that shows folks with mental health issues are far more likely to be the victims of violence than commit them. Too, I’ve seen more context-aware calls, like those pointing out cultures of toxic white masculinity and the need to change a pathological culture of gun-worship and big funding to keep access to high-powered weapons constitutionally protected.
Emotions are raw, so it’s almost impossible to think or feel in any way except utterly devastated for the families and victims of this vexed public health crisis. And analyzing the situation from an ACEs science-trauma-informed (TI) perspective would enter us dangerously into conversations that might humanize the shooter. Yet I suspect we all know this conversation is absolutely fugal without applying and acting with a TI lens.
I want to be very clear here that I agree that politicians and anti-gun control advocates reach for the “mental health” explanation as a way to individualize and pathologize a problem that is actually about preserving power and privilege. We have to be able to talk about ACEs and trauma, though, because when we discuss prevention in earnest (beyond the Orwellian “see something, say something”) our approaches must be trauma-informed. If we are too quick to flatten “mental health” defenses, then it’s likely we’ll have a harder time getting real about a key aspect of the problem.
I found this article when trying to find a way to talk with my friends and colleagues about having a more nuanced conversation about “mental health” and mass shootings. This Feb. 15 New Yorker article, “President Trump’s Victim-Blaming Response to the Mass Shooting in Florida,” by Amy Davidson Sorkin critiques Trump’s address for its victim-blaming. She points out Trump’s comment that there were “so many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior. Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!” is both absurd and false. She rightly calls out Republican lawmakers for the perversity of calling out mental health as a major issue while working to gut access to health care. I don’t disagree with anything she said, but I am struck that these descriptions of Nikolas Cruz, just hang there without commentary:
Teachers had been warned to be alert if [Cruz] appeared [on campus]. His own mother, who had adopted him when he was an infant, reportedly, had sought help. (She died late last year; the family of a friend took him in and [said]...they saw no warning signs, apart from a moodiness and depression that they attributed to the loss of a parent).
CNN Reports about Cruz, “Cruz was adopted at a young age by Roger and Lynda Cruz. Roger died years ago, following an illness. He was taken in by the parents of a schoolmate...His mother’s death capped troubled high school years that ended with his expulsion from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.”
It is reported that Cruz tortured animals and acted erratically as a child. No one seems surprised that he entered his former school and murdered 17 people.
As I made my morning coffee, I listened to NPR’s “Weekend Edition” host Scott Simon interview former Columbine High School student and current Director of Counseling and Support Services for the Denver Public School System, Samantha Haviland, about her response to the current mass school shooting. Towards the end of the rather milquetoast interview, she describes for Simon the now-mundane reality of regular, unannounced active shooter school drills.
It can be a very scary experience. It’s a reality now...so when we do a drill we don’t tell students they are drills...we want to normalize and help feel calm during those things. And I’ve also wondered what is the impact of doing these drills for our students...I think it’s triggering our students who have already experienced trauma and secondary trauma...we’ve seen students go through all kinds of emotional reactions during drills, panic and sadness and grief and fear because during these drills you really don’t know what’s happening.
It’s the first time I’ve heard the word “trauma” uttered in a way that gets at traumatized systems. Cruz likely had a significantly elevated ACEs score; he likely suffered trauma that altered the neural pathways of his brain. He may have set off “every red flag,” as law enforcement officials have described after the shooting, but his troubled behavior did not seem to trigger a key question: “What happened to you?” Our kids are subjected to drills that mimic real events and these drills are traumatic. Have we become so desensitized to trauma that we write off the red flags as some pathetic, mundane experience we all have and thus, is no real excuse for murdering other human beings?
Folks, we should consider wresting control of the ineffective, fugal “mental health debate” and insist instead that the entire system is traumatized and our approaches should respond with modalities that understand ACEs, neurobiology, and trauma-informed approaches to life (not just education). Let’s work on reframing the tired debate about “missing all the signs” of distorted, disturbed behavior and ask why we’re missing the opportunity to prevent forest fires, as it were, in the first place. We have to think systemically and resist the tendency for folks to pathologize, for folks to lump TI-approaches that are ACEs science-informed in with “mental health defenses.” I want to name it--to issue the red flag warning, and help folks understand the science and the realness of the invisible fire we can see and hear and feel and that will burn us all to the ground.
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