News Brief: Be it Violence or the Virus, Mukherjee's Focus is on Public Health and Safety

RIC Assistant Professor Soumyadeep Mukherjee, together with Ziyad Ben Taleb and Philip Baiden of the University of Texas-Arlington, have co-authored the article "Locked, Loaded, and Ready for School: The Association of Safety Concerns with Weapon-Carrying Behavior Among Adolescents in the United States."

According to the writers, "There is limited, if any, prior research exploring the potential link between adolescents' safety concerns and their predisposition to possess weapons."

In their study, 200,000 high school students are surveyed. They found that students who had been injured or threatened at school by a weapon or been involved in a physical fight were more likely to carry weapons and more likely to miss school because they felt unsafe."

"These findings offer a unique opportunity to address the problems of school absenteeism brought about by experiences of aggression and fears for safety," says Mukherjee. "We recommend that future research take a closer look at the psychological motivations behind weapons possession."

Mukherjee also recently authored "Disparities, Desperation, and Divisiveness: Coping with COVID-19 in India," where he examines the mental health implications of the lockdown imposed in India during the early days of the coronavirus.

"As in many parts of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have widened all forms of societal disparities in India," he says. "In this commentary, I discuss vulnerable sections of the population, including daily wage workers, migrant laborers, the elderly, religious minorities and women and children, who have experienced various forms of economic, sociopolitical and familial stigma, racism and violence."