Workplace violence and active shootings are arguably the greatest horror of the American modern age.

We held our first-ever Mental Health Advisory Meeting on Friday, May 6, 2016.

We would like to thank the two organizational psychologists who joined us – Dr. Liesbeth Gerritsen of Portland Police and Dr. Leslie Hammer of PSU/OHSU – and clinical psychologist Dimitri Ntatsos.

The data compiled during this meeting will eventually be imported into the preemption part of our emergency response training.

We are sad that much of the data we are about to share with you is not well known and certainly not well distributed in our society. Please take these links and distribute!

The ONLY thing that can protect us from horribly violent events is knowledge and the "situational awareness" that knowledge always brings.

Synopsis of Psychiatry

Authors: Benjamin James Sadock, MD and Virginia Alcott Sadock MD

Summary, via Amazon.com: The Synopsis of Psychiatry has been the leading clinical psychiatric resource for psychiatrists both in the US and around the world. It has the reputation of being an independent, accurate, reliable and objective compendium of new events in the field of psychiatry. In this best-selling textbook in psychiatry for over 40 years, the reader will find a thorough discussion of both the behavioral sciences and clinical psychiatry. The 11th edition integrates all the DSM-5 criteria and provides a detailed and comprehensive overview of treatment methods for every known mental disorder.

Trauma-Proofing Your Kids: A Parents’ Guide for Instilling Confidence, Joy and Resilience

Authors: Peter A. Levine, Maggie Kline

Summary, via Amazon.com: Millions have experienced bullying, violence (real or in the media), abuse or sexual molestation. Many other kids have been traumatized from more “ordinary” ordeals such as terrifying medical procedures, accidents, loss and divorce. In addition to arming parents with priceless protective strategies, best-selling authors Dr. Peter A. Levine and Maggie Kline offer an antidote to trauma and a recipe for creating resilient kids no matter what misfortune has besieged them. Trauma-Proofing Your Kids is a treasure trove of simple-to-follow “stress-busting,” boundary-setting, sensory/motor-awareness activities that counteract trauma’s effect on a child’s body, mind and spirit. Including a chapter on how to navigate the inevitable difficulties that arise during the various ages and stages of development, this ground-breaking book simplifies an often mystifying and complex subject, empowering parents to raise truly confident and joyful kids despite stressful and turbulent times.

The Perversion of Virtue: Understanding Murder-Suicide

Author: Thomas Jonier

Summary, excerpt by Thomas Jonier: “Genuine murder-suicides, the present perspective asserts, start with the decision to die by suicide, which leads to the perversion of an interpersonal virtue, which leads, in turn, to murder…suicides, in general, as well as murder-suicide, are premeditated…a rival contender is suicide-murder, the advantage of this term is that it gets the mental sequencing right (but not the behavioral sequencing). According to the framework developed in this book, it is murder, plain and simple, premeditated and planned out to satisfy a virtue – either mercy, justice, glory or duty (virtues about which, it should be remembered, people can be passionate indeed). The virtue is perverted, true, but in the mind of the murderer (and soon the suicide decedent), it is a virtue nonetheless.

School Shooters: Understanding high school, college and adult perpetrators

Author: Peter Langman, Ph.D.

Summary: School shootings scare everyone, even those not immediately affected. They make national and international news. They make parents afraid to send their children off to school. But they also lead to generalizations about those who perpetrate them. Most assumptions about the perpetrators are wrong and many of the warning signs are missed until it’s too late. Here, Peter Langman takes a look at 48 national and international cases of school shootings in order to dispel the myths, explore the motives, and expose the realities of preventing school shootings from happening in the future, including identifying at risk individuals and helping them to seek help before it’s too late.

How to spot the warning signs and prevent mass shootings

For this article, I appreciated the piece on “stereotype”

“But one stereotype does seem to stand up: mass shooters tend to be isolated. Those who knew the Oregon gunman described him as “withdrawn and quiet” and “awkward loner” – and that’s not an unusual profile.” This theme of “awkward” is potentially something that could be looked for around, say, a shopping mall or even a workplace environment.  Finally, if you continue scrolling down, the author provides “eight common warning behaviors.”

Are mass shootings contagious? Some scientists who study how viruses spread say yes.

For this article, the “contagion effect” is further reinforced (this appears to be a common thread in the research and with the books I’ve been reading).

SchoolShooters.info

This site is a compendium of documents relating to a wide range of active shooter incidents in educational settings, compiled by Peter Langman, PH.D.

Analyzing Language in Suicide Notes and Legacy Tokens: Investigating Clues to Harm of Self and Harm to Others in Writing

Authors:  Michael J. Egnoto and Darrin J. Griffin

Online First Publication, January 19, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1027/0227-5910/a000363

SUMMARY: Identifying precursors that will aid in the discovery of individuals who may harm themselves or others has long been a focus of scholarly research. Findings for this particular study indicate support for automated identification of writings associated with harm to self, harm to others, and other student writing products. 

Some Warning Behaviors Discriminate Between School Shooters and Other Students of Concern

Authors: J. Reid Meloy, Jens Hoffmann and Karoline Roshdi, Angela Guldimann

Summary: How do we differentiate amongst the warning behaviors between school shooters and other students of concern? Five warning behaviors were found to occur with significantly greater frequency in the school shooters: pathway, fixation, identification, novel aggression, and last resort.

Mass Homicide and Suicide Deadliness and Outcome

Summary: This study focuses on rampage homicides in which an individual sets out, typically with an arsenal of guns, to kill as many people as he or she can, sometimes randomly and sometimes those against whom he or she has a grievance. It sought to explore two facets (the outcome and the deadliness) and two questions: (1) what are the differences between those rampage killers who completed suicide at the time of the act and those who were captured, and (2) whether any of the characteristics of the rampage killers were associated with the deadliness of the rampage.

A Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the United States Between 2000 and 2013.

Author: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation

Summary: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2014 initiated a study of “active shooter” incidents. The goal of the FBI study is to provide federal, state, and local law enforcement with data so they can better understand how to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from these incidents.

A Comparative Analysis of Attempted and Completed School-Based Mass Murder Attacks

Author: Laura E. Agnich

Summary: School shootings are rarely studied quantitatively due to the fact that they are relatively rare, albeit powerful events. While they are typically examined using a narrow definition of what constitutes an attack, this study examines multiple-victim homicide attacks at schools using a quantitative comparative approach.

Coping Styles Moderate the Relationships Between Exposure to Community Violence and Work-Related Outcomes

Author: Cody B. Cox, Jennie Johnson and Tom Coyle

Summary: The purpose of this study was to identify coping strategies used by employees exposed to community violence and their relationships to work-related outcomes. Results indicate that workers use a variety of coping strategies in response to community violence that both lessen and magnify the effects of violence exposure and impact their psychological strain, turnover intention, and job performance.

Comparative Analysis of Threat and Risk Assessment Measures

Author: Brian Van Brunt, Ed.D.

Summary: This study reviews four approaches to risk and threat assessment applied to three case studies. It also utilizes several tools aimed at assessing risk & threat.

Active Shooters – The Quiet Threat That Dwells in Your Backyard

Author: Nadav Morag, Ph.D. 

Summary: This article examines the serious problem of active shooters and attempts to provide some context and understanding of the phenomenon. Common characteristics of active shooter attacks, psychological & social behaviors and issues characteristic of active shooters, discussion on the law enforcement response to active shooter attacks, and tips to help businesses prepare for and cope with active shooter threats.

The effect of bullying on burnout in nurses: the moderating role of
psychological detachment

Authors: Belinda C. Allen, Peter Holland & Roslyn Reynolds

Summary: The aim of the study was to examine the relationship between bullying and burnout and the potential buffering effect psychological detachment might have on this relationship. Bullying is positively associated with burnout. Psychological detachment does not significantly moderate the relationship between bullying and burnout.

The School Shooter, A Threat Assessment Perspective

Author: Mary Ellen O'Toole, PhD

Summary: This monograph presents a systematic procedure for threat assessment and intervention. A four pronged approach is detailed breaking down threat assessment and intervention. 

The Moral Economy of Violence in the US Inner City

Authors: George Karandinos, Laurie Kain Hart, Fernando Montero Castrillo, and Philippe Bourgois

Summary: A discussion on how we understand the high levels of US inner-city violence as operating within a moral logic framed by economic scarcity and hostile state relations.

Patterns Among School Shooters: Body-Related Issues and the Military

Author: Peter Langman Ph.D.

Summary: This document expands the research on these issues, going beyond what was presented in the author’s book: details about each shooter are provided for each of the topics, and then a final chart tallies the results for each shooter across the different domains. The shooters are grouped by population: secondary school shooters, college shooters, and aberrant adult shooters.

National Defense Research Institute: Using Behavioral Indicators to Help Detect Potential Violent Acts: A Review of the Science Base

Authors: Paul K. Davis, Walter L. Perry, Ryan Andrew Brown, Douglas Yeung, Parisa Roshan, Phoenix Voorhies

Summary: This report reviews the scientific literature relating to observable behavioral indicators that might, along with other information, help detect potential attacks, such as those by suicide terrorists or the laying of improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

School Shooters on College Campuses Peter Langman, Ph.D.

Summary: This study examined 16 perpetrators of multi-victim shootings at colleges and universities, comparing them using Langman’s typology of psychopathic, psychotic, and traumatized shooters, and dividing them into targeted vs. random attackers.

Trauma-Informed Care in Behavioral Health Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Trauma-Informed Care in Behavioral Health Services.

Summary: The focus of this journal is to define and conceptualize what trauma informed care is and its impact within the community. This Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) is divided into three parts: Part 1: A Practical Guide for the Provision of Behavioral Health Services. Part 2: An Implementation Guide for Behavioral Health Program Administrators. Part 3: A Review of the Literature

Suicide by mass murder: Masculinity, aggrieved entitlement, and rampage school shootings

Authors: Rachel Kalish and Michael Kimmel

Summary: Three American cases are discussed, which involve suicide, to elucidate how the culture of hegemonic masculinity in the US creates a sense of aggrieved entitlement conducive to violence. This sense of entitlement simultaneously frames suicide as an appropriate, instrumental behavior for these males to underscore their violent enactment of masculinity.

Weapons of Mass (Murder) Destruction

Author: James Alan Fox and Monica J. DeLateur

Summary: In the wake of virtually every large-scale mass shooting, significant debate surfaces about the role of firearms in facilitating a bloodbath." For this reason, in this article there is a specific focus on the role of guns in mass shootings and the impact on both legislation and public opinion.

The Role of Warning Behaviors in Threat Assessment: An Exploration and Suggested Typology

Authors: J. Reid Meloy, Ph.D.*, Jens Hoffmann, Ph.D.,†
Angela Guldimann, M.A., and David James, M.B., B.S., M.A.

Summary: The concept of warning behaviors offers an additional perspective in threat assessment. A typology of eight warning behaviors for assessing the threat of intended violence is proposed: pathway, fixation, identification, novel aggression, energy burst, leakage, directly communicated threat, and last resort behaviors is reviewed.

Personality and Social Psychology: Risk factors of workplace bullying for men and women: The role of the psychosocial and physical work environment

Author: Denise Saline

Summary: Workplace bullying has been shown to be a severe social stressor at work, resulting in high costs both for the individuals and organizations concerned. Increased knowledge of risk factors is important as it enables us to take more effective measures to decrease the risk of workplace bullying.

Political Skill: A Proactive Inhibitor of Workplace Aggression Exposure and an Active Buffer of the Aggression-Strain Relationship

Authors: Zhiqing E. Zhou, Liu-Qin Yang, Paul E. Spector

Summary: In the current study, the role of 4 dimensions of political skill (social astuteness, interpersonal influence, networking ability, and apparent sincerity) are examined in predicting subsequent workplace aggression exposure based on the proactive coping framework.

Workplace Violence: A report to the Nation

Authors: multiple, see page 13/14

Summary: In April 2000, The University of Iowa Injury Prevention Research Center took an important first step to meet this need by sponsoring the Workplace Violence Intervention Research Workshop in Washington, DC. The goal of this workshop was to examine issues related to violence in the workplace and to develop recommended research strategies to address this public health problem. The workshop brought together 37 invited participants representing diverse constituencies within industry, organized labor, municipal, state, and federal governments, and academia. The following is a summary of the problem of workplace violence and the recommendations
identified by participants at the workshop.

Organizational Influences and Demand Influences on Workplace Bullying

Authors: Mary Beth Rousseau, Kimberly A. Eddleston, Pankaj C. Patel, Franz Kellermanns

Summary: this journal integrates the Conservation of Resources Theory with the addition of how a hostile workplace influences and/or impacts human behavior rather than focusing on the individual characteristics of the victim and/or bully.