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The analysis included 16,000 neighborhoods in 100 U.S. cities
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — A recent study led by the New Jersey’s Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers University and nonprofit research institute RTI International has found increased gun violence is associated with insufficient sleep and poor mental health.
Lead author Daniel Semenza, director of interpersonal violence research at Rutgers University said, “The findings demonstrate that gun violence has wide-reaching health implications not only for individuals, but entire neighborhoods. Gun violence is not only a public health crisis because of the many lives it claims every year, but also because of its indirect impacts on collective health that reverberate through whole communities.”
Examining data from nearly 16,000 neighborhoods across 100 U.S. cities from 2014 through 2019, the researchers discovered a reciprocal relationship between poor mental health and insufficient sleep, with community gun violence worsening both. The researchers assessed factors like economic hardship in the community, the demographics of the population, population density and proximity to trauma centers. Notably, the data shows gun violence has the strongest direct association with poor sleep rather than with poor mental health.
“We examined how the circumstances surrounding and within neighborhoods affected sleep, mental health and gun violence in the community,” said RTI Quantitative Criminologist Ian Silver, Ph.D. “Our findings underline the importance of reducing community violence through long-term interventions and addressing health disparities across the U.S.”
The team’s findings were published in Social Science & Medicine in May, 2024. New Jersey’s Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers University and RTI continue to collaborate on projects examining the impact of gun violence in the U.S.
Read the full study
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