building a better bay area moving forward finding solutions. this is abc 7 news. hi there. i'm kristen z. you're watching getting answers live on abc 7. we ask experts your questions every day at three to get answers for you in real time. today. we're going to take a closer look at the common notion that mental illness may be the primary cause of mass. such as the tragedy and uvalde texas this week that killed 19 children and two teachers. well, look at how the terrific events impact children's brains and how gun violence has become the leading cause of death in children. we're all going to tackle other issues affecting the wellness of children right now the baby formula shortage. there's also the monkey pox issue and of course covid joining us now to better understand how the mental health

fits into or doesn't fit into mass shootings. abc 7 news special correspondent, dr. alok patel and professor jennifer skeem from uc berkeley's goldman school of public policy professor scheme and dr. patel. thank you both for joining us. like you look every time there's an incident like this and it's too often the conversation tends to fall into two camps. right one says we need more mental health. the other tends to say we need more gun control, right and those who say we need more mental health tend to be drawing a straight line between mental health and mass shooter incidents. so, texas, governor, greg abbott actually just commented on something like that an hour ago in his press conference. let's listen. one of the needs is need for mental health care and we have an abundance of mental health care services that we are going to be able to provide that includes state and private providers that will be providing mental health assistance to

anyone in the community who needs it. when i say anyone that means they totality of anybody who lives in this community. we believe that you would benefit from mental health care services. all right on its face. there are a few people who would argue against more mental health care in the us, right? but what is it that concerns you about this conversation? maybe what is not said or maybe what is implied dr. patel start with you? i think off the bat just jumping to this link number not only kind of dismisses a lot of the actual issues surrounding easy access to firearms a lack of safety training the multiple multiple states out there that don't have any background checks and the fact that gun violence is on the rise. we're a single only developed country that has this kind of mass public health issue. we are not unique in our pump mental illness epidemic and you know, we have the whole issue that is also just further stig. mental illness calling all people with mental illness

potentially violent and that this is the problem to solve when it's kind of missing. could the underlying issue now i do agree and i think professor scheme and anyone else would also agree that we do need more funding for for access for mental health care and it there's a bit of hypocrisy when politicians out there who are anti-gun controls say well, we need more mental illness because they don't go on. fund legislation supporting that as well. so there's a lot of issues with making this this straight line comparison. yeah professor scheme there seems to be an overestimation of the relationship between serious mental illness and violence. but what is your research say about that? well research indicates that there's actually a fairly weak relationship between mental illness and violence. the fact of the matter is we have very strong stigma of mental illness and it intersects directly with violence. so when we have a tragedy like this, it demands explanation and stigma can kind of fuel a pseudo

explanation in this case. so we ask, you know, why has this young man done this terrible thing and we answer because he's mentally ill. and then the follow-up question. how do we know that? he's mentally ill and the answer is because he's done this terrible thing. it's a very circular pseudo-explanation and it's built very much on stigma of mental illness. so if we really look at rigorous research on the link between mental illness and violence. see that in the community people with mental illness are slightly more likely to become involved in violence than those without illness, especially if substance abuse is involved, but only a tiny tiny fraction of violent incidents are attributable to mental illness. and as one of my colleagues has said jeff swanson if we were able to cure mental illness today, it would be a phenomenal accomplishment and we certainly need a stronger mental health

care system, but we would only take care of about percent of the violence that happens in our society and that is true not just for common violence, but also gun violence and you know, although they're limited. it seems that analysis of mass violence also indicates that it's a small minority of incidents that are attributable to mental health problems. yeah. we got to keep that percentage in mind dr. patel you and i were talking earlier about something we saw in national geographic. there was a study it seems like in human history. what was it in humans 2 and of our deaths are attributable to human to human conflict, like people killing people that is right, and we overrepresent in terms of the animal kingdom like 60% of mammals. don't even kill their own species at all. so if that's been our history, and if we can't really change human nature if you look at the totality of human history if you attribute that to nature then would it not stand to reason

that if we can't stop humans from or small percentage of humans from killing humans, then maybe make it more difficult for them to kill a lot of humans at once. kristen that would make sense and you know the pinning this a gun violence on some type of innate issue with every single mass shooter, you know, we look at the fact that there is a propensity for some people for whatever reason to want to go out and commit harm and there are people for a variety of reasons. we've seen say like i'm going to go and purchase this weapon that's designed to kill humans. like that's what an assault rifle was originally designed for and we ask ourselves. why is there such easy access to it when we actually try to bring up this this question we use data. we are very clear. making this a public health issue and you know the nra in 2019. doctor stay in your lane. this is not public health and we respond back now and say in 2017 firearm deaths became a number one cause of deaths in children under the age of 19.

how is this not a public health issue in 2015 90% of firearm debts in the age of 1 to 14 and developed countries were in the united states and this is because of access to firearms now the underlying reasons of why this is happening is a combination of the majority is homicide, but then there's also suicide a smaller percentage about 35% and then accidental discharges, but it all comes down to the easy easy access a lack of training a lack of safety surrounding firearms, but professors scheme. how would you answer to folks such as one of our viewers done here saying look, you know nobody in their right mind would do this. what do you say to that? what i say to that is that that illustrates beautifully the circular reasoning that i brought up earlier that we have we want an explanation and we tend to adopt suda explanations that just say, you know mental

illness is the only thing that could explain this. otherwise incomprehensible act. and the problem is that that's it's not an explanation. so they're really hard questions that have to be answered number one is a serious mental illness present that's difficult to determine even if the person is still available to talk with but the second question is if there was a mental illness present was it causally linked with the incident? is this actually the reason did it motivate the violence and the best research indicates that again the strongest risk factors for violence are shared between people who have mental illness and don't have mental illness. so even among people who have mental illness. their violent incidents are often driven by the same factors that drive the incidents for other people. so risk factors, like being male being very young having been victimized having antisocial

traits having poor anger control substance abuse. these are the kinds of factors that are more strongly linked with violence than mental illness per se and as dr. patel has pointed out the the other part of the conversation is about access. guns and our policy, unfortunately at the federal level has mostly focused on keeping guns out of the hands that people with mental illness. that's an ineffective strategy if we pay attention to keeping guns out of their hands of people who were at risk for all of these other reasons, we would probably cover we would make all of ours all of us a lot safer our children safer dr. patel where does gun violence right now on the list of leading causes of death for children? in america we're number one. i mean, sorry, we're not number one. it is number one and i say we because i almost feel like this is an ownership. this is a problem that we need to own as americans the fact that this is unique to our developed country. not number one the other nations

for children as the leading cause of death. no in the united states, and this is from the new england journal of medicine. and you know, what's really sad is that this finding has been reported since 2017 when it finally overtook motor vehicle accidents and the nutrient new in the journal medicine reported this in the end of april and there were no news headlines about it. we've almost accepted it which is which is sickening to me. i remember there was a pushback several years ago in florida against pediatricians asking and screening families if they had a gun in the house and how storing it and there was pushback and saying that's none of your business. how can something that is contributing to so many pediatric deaths not be none of our business or not be related to public health like these have to be conversations that we can have without somebody saying you want to take away our guns because that is not the conversation. the conversation is strictly related to harm reduction. how do we coexist in a society that there is a religious defense of owning a gun versus another party. that's just like how do we keep people alive? how do we reduce the amount of

innocent people who are shot? why? you to think that when it comes to this particular issue the responses or solutions that people offer tend to be very binary or you know, only look at this path because you mentioned in the number two leading cause ofthea d children car accidents. so we as adults try to do everything we can for multiple angles to lower that right you say we have the seatbelts where the child car seat. we're gonna make the freeways better. we've got to change the have the stop signs or lower the speed limit around schools. like they're multiple approaches. why do you think think with this issue people tend to not want to take a more comprehensive approach. i'll pass this game first. yeah, my own impression is that this is not the only issue that we adopt simplistic explanations for and it's certainly not the only issue that's become highly politicized. but it doesn't this better solutions don't have to be highly politicized. i think there would be agreement

across the political spectrum that it is a wise idea to keep guns out of the hands of people who are dangerous whether they have mental illness or not. so adopting policies like red flag laws having better. criteria that really are evidence-based for identifying people who are dangerous who are risky now would be a solution that would work across both sides of the aisle. there. are there other solutions. yes, there are many many other solutions, but it seems that that one needs to be taken soon professor jennifer scheme at the goldman school at uc berkeley. thank you so very much dr. patel. don't go away a lot more to talk about with you and for our viewers our discussion on mental health in light of the the school shooting continues at four today dr. nia saunders a psychologist from san leandro will be joining us and she will offer insight on racial trauma and how to talk to teens about

these incidents tune in for that and look for continuing coverage on our website abc7 news.com where we have very latest on the texas tragedy and the full list of mental health res. to stay with us. we'll be right back with dr. patel. big tobacco's cigarette butts filter practically nothing

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special correspondent dr. alok patel. we're going to be tackling a lot of health headlines today, including monkeypox baby formula and your own covid recovery, by the way, you look well, and i'm super happy. about that, but we'll talk about all that in a little bit right now. i do want to finish our conversation though with regard to when children go through something as traumatic as a mass shooting at their school like the kids in uvalde those who survive what happens to their brain. what is the impact?

the impact can be devastating kristen, which is why you know, i hope the conversations were having right now about supporting survivors or anyone who's affected by a mass shooting by a large scale active violence like this continuous for the for a long period of time and not just right now in the acute period because if you look at the younger child is when children's brains develop until they're in their mid-20s we call all these groups of these traumatic things that can happen to the aces or adverse traumatic experiences they could be anything from domestic violence to neglect homelessness sexual abuse or witnessing or being around a shooting and it's it's just it's heinous how much our children have to go through on a daily basis whether they're watching and use or if they live in a town like this or given the fact that there are 40,000 us deaths a year from gun violence. they're affected in some way directly or indirectly by that also, so we need we really need to take in mind that we are normalizing this exper. for our kids and it is potentially having a terrible long stream detrimental effect on their developing brains, you

know, i see a parallel to covid like we're so long covid absolutely. absolutely even it and when you say long covid, i don't know if you mean that with respect to actually long covid or the long term effects of what have happened from the lockdown. those are both very very important points to look at because covid absolutely represented a bunch of adverse childhood experiences from school. your children missing out on their friends fear of dying fear or losing their parents to how many thousands of kids have been hospitalized or have become orphans because they've walked lost their parents this all fits into this category and mean, it's gut wrenchy to think about what is happening to this generation right now. yeah. all right. you got a round of two truths in a life for us with regard to some of the new headlines. absolutely. everyone knows how this goes. we're gonna be rapid here. just tell me which one of these is not true. is it a the monkey pox vaccine being released from the national stockpile is genius and is only for those who are high risk of serious disease or is it b

monkey pox? there's nine cases in seven states as of thursday, or see the bacteria in question regarding the formula recall is called coronav actor saka zaki. i don't even know how to pronounce second part, right which one of those is not true, you know. think as of now, it's 10 cases in eight states, but you said as of thursday, so could have been true yesterday. i'm going to say a is the lie because i don't think the criteria is for those who are high risk of serious disease so a that there is no way you did not crush your sats with those analysis deals kristen. so you're right a is the right answer. i think this is important because there's all these statements rolling around on twitter and people accusing this of being another mass vaccination campaign. that is absolutely not true. the only indication right now are people who have a high risk of exposure such as someone who's for somebody in a health facility or people who are working in a clinical labs or if someone's been directly exposed from somebody who has a suspect

case of monkeypox, so it's not that many people out there, but that is what the release is for. okay. thanks for clearing that up for us and thank you for the pet on the back for the sats. i do want to ask you about the baby formula shortage a little bit more because i know it worsened this week especially here in san francisco where we had the biggest jump from 30ish percent to 80% in terms of out-of-stock rates at stores. so it looks like it's going to be a while before it gets better. so, you know as a pediatrician, what do you advise parents do in the meantime what to do to do what not to do? in the past week, which is so frustrating. so one of the most important things that parents can do if your child is taking some type of formula and does not have any underlying medical conditions is to chat with a healthcare professional whether that is a nurse a position anyone about what another alternative would be for that formula oftentimes is a simple switch and it won't cause a lot of problems. there's even liquid formulas out there that people can try if

children are six months. is time to start trying to diversify those foods get another source of calories in there and things to not do you do not want to make your own formula at home to water down formula use expired formula you may have purchased from online. skip all of that and also for young babies on the age of six months alternative alternative forms of milk such as cow's milk or plant-based milk or just not gonna cut it when it comes to nutrition, but kristen you've heard me say this my biggest worry are those kids who have underlying medical medical conditions who require a specific type of formula in those situations it is best to chat with the position who might be able to get you a supply directly from the manufacturer, right? some people can switch formulas, but not everybody. absolutely your p. ediatric don't go away because we want to talk about how well you and your family are all recovering from covid. so stick around you can join us on facebook live in chat right now if you want. now if you want.

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when a truck hit my car, the insurance company wasn't fair. i didn't know what my case was worth. so i called the barnes firm. i was hit by a car and needed help. i called the barnes firm, that was the best call i could've made. i'm rich barnes. it's hard for people to know how much their accident case is worth. let our injury attorneys help you get the best result possible. ♪ the barnes firm injury attorneys ♪ ♪ call one eight hundred, eight million ♪ news special correspondent dr. alok patel. we want to talk about the latest covid headlines before we get to

the another round of two truths and elijah. just want to ask you. how are you doing now? because on monday, i think it was right that you came on and you were like darn it it kristen. i just tested positive. i appreciate you asking and truth. is that all three of us as of today have tested negative. i still feel some of the lingering effects from it and you know, my case is not special people have been getting covid now left and right for two years and i feel like now everyone is something around someone but what was really fascinating to me were two things number one. i had the worst sore throat i've ever experienced in my entire life to the point where i was reading up case reports and kristen you and i talked about this at the five day since symptom onset mark. that's the point when the cdc says that you can leave. 18 and wear a mask around other people. i was still testing positive i tested positive for two more days my wife tested positive for three more days after that which goes to tell you that if you're going back to a high-risk setting after five days. you may want to take a test before you do. so. yeah. i mean you got a mask. that's number one and from what i'm hearing. it sounds like as long as you guys kept testing positive you

were gonna stay home, right even if that took eight days ten days, whatever it was, right. that is because my my break from home would be going to the hospital and not about to go to the hospital, even if it's five days wearing a mask unless i was testing negative consistently. i went back to the hospital after testing negative two days in a row. okay, let's tackle some more of the headlines with regard to covid. here's another round of two truths and a lie. i am ready for this. tell us which one is not true. is it a according to the new york times covid cases are of 26% over the past 14 days or is it b only about eight million kids will be eligible for the booster shot five to eleven years old or is it c only 50,000 prescriptions for paxilvid were written last week per the white house which one of these is not true. i leave that up there finally fun with covid numbers if you have a guests go ahead and put it on facebook live, i think. be is true and that is because so few kids in that age category got their original too.

i think about 50,000 prescriptions for pax limited sounds right because it is still being under prescribed. i'm going to go with a being the lie because i think covid cases are actually more than 26% perhaps double that over the past 14 days. so gregory agrees with me and that's good enough a i like your reasoning with b, but c is actually the lie. so the prescriptions last week. we're about a hundred and eighty thousand which is a big increase from where they were prior. but still there is what what is suspected right now is that there's still a difficulty in getting packs of it. i've even had people here in the bay area tell me that they couldn't find it at any local walgreens and walgreens are openly telling them like, we're all out. try this one location elsewhere cbs's were saying that they were out of it. also even kaiser. so the question now becomes is as we mission to looking at living with this virus and assessing individual risk. we have to still make sure that we're encouraging people to ask their positions and vice versa about things like ebu shell if you're immunocompromised or getting packs of it.

there's some physicians out there who are still reluctant to prescribe it or say. hey, they're only for people 65 and older when it's for anyone 12 and older who may be high risk and a is important because cases are still on the rise as our hospitalizations. not so much debts, which just tells us it's all around us. even though we are much better protected against it from before and be christian. you've heard me say this 1,000 times. we just have to improve our vaccination numbers in children all over. see, i wasn't as good as you thought and and some of our viewers went with me. i'm true. not too confident that i would have the right answer. but you know, thanks for the senior sharks. you're a shark. look i do want to ask you though. what is your biggest fear with regard to covid now that it seems like you're beautiful. alora is coming out of him. she's negative. but do you still have lingering fears as a parent? absolutely with respect to my own daughter. i do have lingering fears about long covid in the back of my mind in the back of my mind. i have lingering fears about misc the multisystem inflammatory condition because you you don't even though it's rare that the risk is still

there when we let you know thousands and thousand children get get infected statistically if you will have a complication and it is a worry of mine. you know, i look at her now. she's happy and running around with her her greek chinese indian afro, and she looks great, but i i still worry and i think a lot of parents. that worry, especially those who have high-risk children, which is why people are still pensive about school reopening cases on the rise and wanting to protect our kids for sure. all right, dr. alok patel. so happy that you are all three testing negative now and really, thank you so much for sharing your insights on all these important topics with us today. will take a short person. thank you. happy friday. happy friday. join us on facebook live.

i had no idea how much i wamy case was worth. c call the barnes firm to find out what your case could be worth. we will help get you the best result possible. ♪ call one eight hundred, eight million ♪ there again there. take care. thank you so much for joining us on this interactive show getting answers today.

we'll be here every weekday at 3:00 on air and on live stream answering your questions world news tonight with david mirrors next. i'll see tonight, authorities revealing a staggering list of law enforcement failures responding to the deadly elementary school shooting in uvalde, texas. in stunning detail the visibly shaken texas director of public safety admitting the incident commander at robb elementary held police back believing no more children were at risk. 911 calls still coming from inside the classroom whispered voices including children, pleading, please send police now. all while as many as 19 officers were right there outside the classroom holding their position. the director calling that the wrong decision, period. authorities now offering minute-by-minute details about how this all unfolded. no security officer on the grounds. a school door left propped open. the gunman carrying dozens of magazines firing at least 100