Trauma's Lasting Impact on Mental Health

45-caliber semiautomatic handgun fired by a schoolmate. Two students were killed during the attack, including her best friend, and two others were injured. When she graduated from high school, she enrolled at Brown University, the scene of another shooting in December 2025, while she was studying for finals in her dorm room. As messages flooded in about an active shooter on campus, she felt pain where she had been shot in the stomach. The college junior experienced a phenomenon she called “phantom bullet syndrome,” similar to phantom limb syndrome, in which someone senses something is there that is not. It occurs whenever she feels extremely stressed, she said. “It’s crazy to say that the first time, I was the lucky one because though I got shot, I didn’t get killed,” said Tretta, now an anti-gun violence advocate who is studying public affairs and education. ” Tretta represents a small but growing cohort of young people who have lived through more than one shooting. She also embodies the findings of a recent study that links gun violence exposure to chronic pain. The study, published in BMC Public Health in January, found that both direct and indirect exposure to gun violence are linked to higher rates of chronic pain among American adults.

Rutgers University researchers studied six types of gun violence exposure: being shot, being threatened with a gun, hearing gunshots, witnessing a shooting, knowing a friend or family member who was shot, and knowing someone who died by firearm suicide. 8% said they had a lot of pain. Daniel Semenza, the study’s lead author, told The Trace that whether someone has lost a person to gun violence or they’ve been shot themselves, their mental and physical health are inextricably linked. “Your body, through the experience of post-traumatic stress, is going to feel as if it’s happening over and over and over again,” said Semenza, the director of research at the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center and an associate professor at Rutgers University. Tretta underwent surgeries to remove the bullet, she said, and later received a nerve block to address ongoing pain from her injuries. But the bullet fragments remain in her body years later, she said. She was also diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis — a chronic disease causing swelling, pain, and stiffness in the joints. “I have dealt with chronic pain, immunodeficiencies, and bodily differences ever since the shooting happened,” Tretta said. “Every time I get a fever, it’s a completely different thing than anyone else I know, or even pre-shooting for me.

” The Rutgers study is one of the first to focus on outcomes like chronic pain as part of an emerging body of work on the physical health toll of gun violence exposure. “It highlights the fact that, for the thousands of people who are killed every year, there are lots of people who knew those folks,” Semenza said. ” Efrat Eichenbaum, an inpatient psychologist who has treated gun violence survivors and their families at a Level 1 trauma center in north Minneapolis, said the study accurately reflects what she has seen in her clinical work. “You can plainly see the trauma that follows an event like that,” she said. “Not just for the survivors, but for their families. It does not even limit itself to family members. ” David Patterson, an emeritus professor at the University of Washington whose work focuses on pain, says the study shows, in particular, just how far the impact of gun violence fans out and how costly a problem it is for society. “Chronic pain is a major health problem in itself, and it costs our society billions of dollars because it’s very hard to manage,” he said.

” Back in her dorm room at Brown, Tretta explained that medical care does not end when someone leaves the hospital after a trauma like hers. It goes on for years. “Your body will never be the same as it was before,” she said. “There’s no time that you can’t feel the 7 or 8 inches of scar tissue running through the middle of your stomach. ” This article was reported by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here. KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF. 0 International License. republication-pixel=true&post=2233469&ga4=G-J74WWTKFM0"; style="width:1px;height:1px;"> Witnessing a shooting, hearing gunfire, losing someone, or living in a violent area can leave people with chronic pain and stress long afterward.