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Penn clinical psychiatry professor Paul Kettl has joined a rising group of researchers advocating for a public health strategy to prevent gun violence.
Credit: Abhiram Juvvadi
Penn Clinical psychiatry professor Paul Kettl has joined a growing number of researchers calling for a public health approach to gun violence prevention.
In a Sept. 4 opinion article for The Washington Post, Kettl challenged the assertion that psychiatrists can identify school shooters and criticized rhetoric that assigns blame in the aftermath of mass shootings. Rather than scrutinize mental health professionals, Kettl suggested a different avenue for preventing future incidents.
“We need to focus on public health measures, meaning gun control laws, and having more care available for schools and children,” Kettl said in an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian.
Kettl’s recommended approach echoes recent Penn research that frames gun violence as a public health crisis. In July, researchers at the Penn Injury Science Center highlighted the role of community-based programs in preventing shootings, emphasizing the importance of school resources and youth outreach.
The research followed a July 7 mass shooting in Philadelphia’s Grays Ferry neighborhood that left three dead and 10 injured at a block party on South Etting Street. The incident became one of the worst in a summer marked by increasing gun violence.
In light of the shooting, Sara Solomon — who serves as the Penn Injury Science Center deputy director — told the DP that “spreading kindness and love” can be used as a “strategy” to curb instances of violence.
Kettl similarly cautioned against attributing responsibility to the families of shooters, noting that relatives cannot reasonably be expected to monitor every detail of a person’s life or online activity. He said that focusing on family members is a “diversion” from solutions that could address violence on a broader scale.
He characterized his article as a way of “divert[ing] blame from family members to a more responsible approach,” including “public health approaches to violence prevention.”
In the piece, Kettl also criticized cuts to federal funding toward mental health research, writing that the changes have left mental health professionals without the tools needed to study violence prevention more effectively.
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