Structural competency and the future of firearm research

Jonathan M. Metzl, Tara McKay and Jennifer L. Piemonte

Social Science & Medicine, 2021, vol. 277, issue C

Abstract: In this critical literature review we develop a five-part agenda for pandemic-era research into mass shootings and multiple-victim homicides that promotes understanding the psychologies of individual shooters within larger structures and systems. We show how the momentous events set in motion by the COVID-19 virus, and the structural drivers of inequity and racism that its spread exposed, challenge mental health research on gun trauma to better account for broader terrains of race and place, as well as the tensions, politics, and assumptions that surround guns in the U.S. more broadly. Doing so will broaden mental-health interventions into epidemics of U.S. gun trauma, and challenge mental health research better recognize structural biases inherent in its own purview. We frame the agenda through the rubric of structural competency, an emerging framework that systematically trains health care professionals and others to recognize ways that institutions, neighborhood conditions, market forces, public policies, and health care delivery systems shape symptoms and diseases.

Keywords: Coronavirus; Pandemic; Mass shootings; Gun violence; Racism; Structural competency; Mental illness; Firearms; Antiracism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113879

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