In 2019, Mia Tretta, then a highschool freshman at Saugus Excessive Faculty in Santa Clarita, California, was struck within the abdomen by a spherical from a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun fired by a schoolmate. Two college students have been killed throughout the assault, together with her finest buddy, and two others have been injured.
When she graduated from highschool, she enrolled at Brown College, the scene of one other taking pictures in December 2025, whereas she was learning for finals in her dorm room.
As messages flooded in about an energetic shooter on campus, she felt ache the place she had been shot within the abdomen. The faculty junior skilled a phenomenon she referred to as “phantom bullet syndrome,” just like phantom limb syndrome, wherein somebody senses one thing is there that isn’t. It happens each time she feels extraordinarily harassed, she mentioned.
“It’s loopy to say that the primary time, I used to be the fortunate one as a result of although I received shot, I didn’t get killed,” mentioned Tretta, now an anti-gun violence advocate who’s learning public affairs and schooling. “And the second time, I used to be the fortunate one as a result of I used to be a number of blocks away.”
Tretta represents a small however rising cohort of younger individuals who have lived by multiple taking pictures. She additionally embodies the findings of a latest examine that hyperlinks gun violence publicity to power ache.
The examine, revealed in BMC Public Well being in January, discovered that each direct and oblique publicity to gun violence are linked to larger charges of power ache amongst American adults.
Rutgers College researchers studied six forms of gun violence publicity: being shot, being threatened with a gun, listening to gunshots, witnessing a taking pictures, realizing a buddy or member of the family who was shot, and realizing somebody who died by firearm suicide. Utilizing a nationally consultant survey of 8,009 folks, they discovered that 23.9% had ache most days or every single day, whereas 18.8% mentioned they’d a number of ache.
Daniel Semenza, the examine’s lead creator, informed The Hint that whether or not somebody has misplaced an individual to gun violence or they’ve been shot themselves, their psychological and bodily well being are inextricably linked.
“Your physique, by the expertise of post-traumatic stress, goes to really feel as if it’s taking place over and over and over,” mentioned Semenza, the director of analysis on the New Jersey Gun Violence Analysis Middle and an affiliate professor at Rutgers College.
Tretta underwent surgical procedures to take away the bullet, she mentioned, and later obtained a nerve block to deal with ongoing ache from her accidents. However the bullet fragments stay in her physique years later, she mentioned.
She was additionally identified with psoriatic arthritis — a power illness inflicting swelling, ache, and stiffness within the joints.
“I’ve handled power ache, immunodeficiencies, and bodily variations ever for the reason that taking pictures occurred,” Tretta mentioned. “Each time I get a fever, it’s a totally totally different factor than anybody else I do know, and even pre-shooting for me. I shake uncontrollably, and it hurts to even contact my arm.”
The Rutgers examine is likely one of the first to give attention to outcomes like power ache as a part of an rising physique of labor on the bodily well being toll of gun violence publicity.
“It highlights the truth that, for the hundreds of people who find themselves killed yearly, there are many individuals who knew these of us,” Semenza mentioned. “The toll of gun violence is way broader than we initially anticipated.”
Efrat Eichenbaum, an inpatient psychologist who has handled gun violence survivors and their households at a Degree 1 trauma middle in north Minneapolis, mentioned the examine precisely displays what she has seen in her medical work.
“You’ll be able to plainly see the trauma that follows an occasion like that,” she mentioned. “Not only for the survivors, however for his or her households. It doesn’t even restrict itself to relations. This is a matter that touches whole communities.”
David Patterson, an emeritus professor on the College of Washington whose work focuses on ache, says the examine exhibits, specifically, simply how far the affect of gun violence followers out and the way expensive an issue it’s for society.
“Persistent ache is a significant well being downside in itself, and it prices our society billions of {dollars} as a result of it’s very laborious to handle,” he mentioned. “You’ll be able to’t remedy it; it needs to be managed.”
Again in her dorm room at Brown, Tretta defined that medical care doesn’t finish when somebody leaves the hospital after a trauma like hers. It goes on for years.
“Your physique won’t ever be the identical because it was earlier than,” she mentioned. “There’s no time that you would be able to’t really feel the 7 or 8 inches of scar tissue operating by the center of your abdomen. It’s only a fixed bodily reminder, as a result of you may’t depart your physique.”
This text was reported by The Hint, a nonprofit newsroom overlaying gun violence in America. Join its newsletters right here.