Research from a group of UW-Madison graduate students sheds new light on the potential relationship between gun ownership and mental health.
Sociology graduate student Jinho Kim found that teens with easy access to a firearm in their home were 3 percent more likely to experience severe depressive symptoms, and the effects were greater for girls.
Kim argued that easy access to guns directly causes an increase in depression and suicide for children within these homes.
Research from the early 2000s found that 20 percent of gun owners with children in the home store their firearms loaded and 10 percent store them both loaded and unlocked — a fact Kim believes is connected to fear and depression.
However, while mental health often plays a role in gun violence, the direct correlation between the two can be stigmatizing for individuals living with mental illness, according to UW-Madison professor of social work Tally Moses.
“Talking in the same sentence about school shootings and mental health is stigmatizing and it infiltrates the consciousness in a very deep way,” Moses said.
Journalists covering school shootings often highlight the shooters’ mental health status, but many other factors contribute to motivations before a mass shooting. Moses suggested that the focus on mental health heightens society’s detrimental correlation between violence and mental health.
“Make sure you’re not sending the message that if mental illness is in the picture then we have our story,” Moses said. “We need a rich, detailed understanding of the individual.”
However, Kim argued that it is important to focus on any factor that may increase the risk of developing depression in children, regardless of the potential implications.
“When you identify those who have a risk of higher depression, whether they have big issues in the family like divorce or maltreatment, we don’t look at whether they also have guns at home,” Kim says. “I think we should.”
