Article written by Alyse Folino Ley, D.O., Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, College of Osteopathic Medicine
In 2018, Aaron Stark stood on stage in Boulder, Colorado, and began his Ted Talk by uttering the words, “I was almost a school shooter.” Stark, a high school student in 1996, admitted through tear-streaked eyes and a quivering voice that in a moment of pain and anger, he almost committed a terrible atrocity.
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released a report documenting 93 school shootings with casualties at public and private schools across the United States in 2020-21, and those numbers have only continued to increase.
But what if there was a way to prevent these incidents from ever taking place long before students reached the heightened level of pain and anger that Aaron Stark did nearly 30 years ago?.