"We do know that those types of mass shootings are contagious, that they tend to spread through things like the media and social media," said Peterson, a co-founder of The Violence Project, a nonprofit research center. "That people who are maybe vulnerable see themselves in other perpetrators who do this, people who already have kind of their own history of trauma, who are maybe feeling suicidal, who are in crisis, who have access to weapons, they see one make national headlines, and there is this copycat effect."
To separate mass shooting prevention from suicide prevention is a mistake, said Joel Dvoskin, a clinical and forensic psychologist with more than 40 years' experience in the field. Mass shootings often happen when despair meets rage, which hasn't been in short supply recently, he said.
"If you think about it, whenever somebody decides to kill a bunch of people, they're deciding to end their life as they know it," Dvoskin said. "Nobody goes back to their job. Nobody goes back to their family. Either they kill themselves or they make sure that the police kill them or they go away for the rest of their life to either prison or a hospital."
"It had the effect of, say, 'Well, I want to go out with a bang,'" Dvoskin said. "'I want to be famous. ... People haven't paid attention to me. They haven't listened to me. They haven't considered me. Well, they're going to pay attention to me now, by God.' And the cable news is all too happy to oblige them."
Experts believe a contagion effect could be tied to recent mass shootings
. JMO.
