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Distinguished Professor Dr. Charles Figley provides expertise to article on mass shooting response
Dr. Charles Figley, Paul Henry Kurzweg Chair in Disaster Mental Health and Distinguished Professor at Tulane School of Social Work, was quoted in a Salon article on responses to mass shootings.
“People adapt, they adjust, they try to look on the bright side,” Charles Figley, director of the Traumatology Institute and a professor of social work at Tulane University, told The Cut after the Parkland shooting. “There are two primary methods of dealing with a traumatic event: to respond, or to put it out of your mind. That’s what’s happening now. We’re still shocked, but we watch the people in the communities where this has happened, and we see their shock, their unpreparedness. We think, ‘There is nothing they could have done.’ The more frequently this happens, the more it reminds people there’s nothing they can do, so they put it out of their minds.”