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Kids with easy access to firearms are more likely to be depressed [news.wisc.edu]

 

Easy access to a gun at home is bad for a child’s mental health, particularly for girls —bad enough, according to a new examination of a study of American schoolchildren from the 1990s, to suggest parents think carefully before making the decision to bring a gun into the home, especially one that may be accessible by the children in the household.

University of Wisconsin–Madison sociology graduate student Jinho Kim found that teenagers who participated in a national study were more likely — about 3 percentage points more likely — to experience severe depressive symptoms if they said they had easy access to a firearm in their home. The effects were even greater for girls.

“There’s a physical and social cost to having a gun that’s well studied. We know it increases your likelihood of suicide and homicide, and your children’s likelihood of suicide,” says Kim, whose results were published recently by the journal Social Science & Medicine. “But the physical consequences are clearer than the psychological consequences. This is the first study of the psychological effect on adolescents.”

[For more on this story by Chris Barncard, go to https://news.wisc.edu/kids-wit...ely-to-be-depressed/]

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