Gun violence killed another Memphis kid. How experts are trying to help those who survive

The shooting death of a 10-year-old near Bartlett marked the 25th child to have been killed by gun violence in Memphis this year. The pace at which kids are being wounded matches 2021, setting the course for what could be the second year in a row with more than 150 children wounded in shootings.

The death on Oct. 13 fits a pattern that has accelerated throughout the past two years. More juveniles are getting shot and more kids are dying, according to data from researchers at Methodist Le Bonheur and statistics from the Memphis Police Department. There have been 25 kids killed by gun violence in 2022, Maj. Karen Rudolph of MPD said this week. The rate of deaths matches the pace of 24 at this time a year ago.

The city's rate of juvenile gun deaths per 100,000 people under 18-years-old — 15.92 deaths per 100,000 outstrips that of Detroit, a similar-sized city with similar demographics and socio-economic status to Memphis.

The rate of youth violence is something that has been high in Memphis for years but accelerated over the past two years. Le Bonheur treated 100 wounded kids in 2017 and that number declined over the next two years before spiking during 2020 and growing the past two years.

One expert said the pandemic, with many children at home, contributed to the spike in kids being shot."...let's say you're living in a community with extreme violence — you're more exposed to that because school has a protective factor," said Dr. Eraina Schauss, the founder and director of the BRAIN (Building Resilience across Ages through Integrative Neuroscience) Center, a group the provides counseling services to trauma victims at Le Bonheur. "When you eliminate the school factor, and you're just immersed in this cycle of stress, your body is responding to that."The scale of the tragedy has occasionally gripped Memphis' broader psyche — the deaths of three kids over Martin Luther King Day Weekend in 2020 brought a citywide moment of silence. There are incessant calls for people to put the guns down.

However, in Memphis, one of the deadliest cities in the U.S., the violence rolls on and has become a fact of life so much so that researchers such as Schauss are helping build new healthcare models that aim to treat the mental and physical impacts of gun violence.

Diving into the mind after trauma

Schauss' partnership with Le Bonheur began in February 2021 and offers a more complete treatment plan for young Memphians as they recover from being shot. She said the physical injury can manifest in long-term trauma, and that trauma can manifest in physical symptoms for kids.

"Everybody's brain works differently in how they process trauma, but there are a lot of commonalities in types of symptoms we see," Schauss said. "When you think about combat veterans coming home from war, it's the same type of response as that. They hear a noise and they jump. A lot of kids, especially younger children, they manifest their symptoms somatically, so they may have more headaches or dizziness or nausea. They have physical symptoms that are attached to their trauma."

To counter the potential for those symptoms to develop, mental health specialists at Le Bonheur offer The BRAIN Center's counseling program to any trauma patient that comes into the hospital's care.

In a study, currently under review with the Journal of Violence and Victims, 69 — or 76% — of the 91 cases studied were victims of intentional shootings, only one of those 69 cases involved suicide. Intentional shootings are when a shooter fires a gun with intent regardless of if they hit who they are aiming at. Unintentional shootings are when a child finds a gun that was poorly stored or a firearm accidentally goes off.

Children getting shot can lead to kids getting their hands on guns to defend themselves in the future, Schauss said, but doing so can escalate into retaliatory violence and turn those who have been shot into those pulling the trigger.

"What we see is kids who are victimized then often go ahead and buy a firearm or get a firearm for protection purposes," she said. "You have this heightened startle response, your nervous system is over activated, you have poor impulse control. So, typically, you have more aggressive behaviors because of that — that's that physiological arousal and response... Anytime you feel startled, and you have a weapon, you think you need to protect yourself, it's a human nature survival instinct."

The program Schauss leads at Le Bonheur started with the intent of sending kids home from the hospital with coping mechanisms for victims and their family members. Since the program's inception, over 2,500 counseling sessions have been provided for over 1,500 trauma patients and family — including other traumatic injuries such as car crashes.

The program comes at a time when over 64% of all pediatric trauma patients met the criteria for acute stress disorder, which is a precursor to post traumatic stress disorder, according to a report conducted by The BRAIN Center. Victims of weapon-related injuries had the highest average score on the childhood stress checklist from all explicitly named injuries. Scores on that checklist higher than one "indicated acute stress and potential for the further development of PTSD" the study said.

Those recovering from a weapons wound averaged a score of 2.37, indicating more intense stress and a higher likelihood of developing PTSD.

Schauss' program strives for long-term results, but with the program being so young she said its consistency will be the part of the reason for trauma recovery.

"Our program is so new — we're still within our first year, essentially, of working with kids," Schauss said. "But we do have a steady number of kids that are coming back for ongoing mental health counseling. If you can stabilize a person's nervous system, essentially, and teach them to not be as reactive to their environment, you're also teaching them to be more resilient in terms of living in a community that has violence."

Violet Ikonomova of the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA Today Network, contributed reporting to this article.

Samuel Hardiman covers Memphis city government and politics for The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached by email at samuel.hardiman@commercialappeal.com or followed on Twitter at @samhardiman. 

Lucas Finton is a news reporter for The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached by email at Lucas.Finton@CommercialAppeal.com and followed on Twitter @LucasFinton.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Memphis gun violence killed 25 kids, how do experts help survivors?