Local Exposure to School Shootings and Youth Antidepressant Use
40 Pages Posted: 31 Dec 2019
There are 3 versions of this paper
Local Exposure to School Shootings and Youth Antidepressant Use
Local Exposure to School Shootings and Youth Antidepressant Use
Local Exposure to School Shootings and Youth Antidepressant Use
Abstract
While over 240,000 American students experienced a school shooting in the last two decades, little is known about the impacts of these events on the mental health of surviving youth. Using large-scale prescription data from 2006 to 2015, we examine the effects of 44 school shootings on youth antidepressant use in a difference-in-difference framework. We find that local exposure to fatal school shootings increases youth antidepressant use by 21.4 percent in the following two years. These effects are smaller in areas with a higher density of mental health providers who focus on behavioral, rather than pharmacological, interventions.
Keywords: school shootings, youth mental health, antidepressants
JEL Classification: I18, J13
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation