• Posted May 15, 2026

How Gun Violence News Coverage Is Harming America's Mental Health

The steady stream of news regarding U.S. gun violence is having a serious effect on Americans' mental health, a new study says.

Greater exposure to media coverage of gun violence is associated with an increased risk of depression and poor mental health days, researchers reported recently in BMC Public Health.

“... These findings suggest that cumulative media exposure to real-world firearm violence could contribute to a mental health burden, even for those not personally involved in an incident,” said lead researcher Devon Ziminski, a postdoctoral fellow at the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at the Rutgers School of Public Health in Piscataway, New Jersey.

Most prior research has investigated how direct experience with gun violence has affected survivors and bystanders, researchers said in background notes.

But gun violence also affects America’s psyche through media coverage of these shootings, researchers added.

For the new study, researchers surveyed about 5,000 adults nationwide, examining the relationship between mental health and real-world news of shootings conveyed through traditional and social media.

Results showed that people more exposed to these reports were 51% more likely to have a greater number of poor mental health days per month.

They also were 21% more likely to have more symptoms of depression, researchers found.

“Findings support existing research that repeated exposure to firearm violence may negatively affect well-being, and that real-world media firearm violence exposure may also have negative implications,” Ziminski said in a news release.

News of mass murders or school shootings can reinforce a person’s feelings of being personally threatened, even if they live in a community with few such incidents, she noted.

“This pattern suggests that the psychological burden of gun violence may extend beyond those directly affected or living in high-violence communities, reaching individuals through repeated media encounters with violent content,” researchers concluded in their paper.

“Given that 84% of U.S. adults use social media and 44% prefer to watch the news, real-world media gun violence exposure poses an underexamined yet important public health concern,” they wrote.

More information

Mental Health America has more on gun violence and mental health.

SOURCES: Rutgers University, news release, May 12, 2026; BMC Public Health, April 10, 2026