Why school lockdown drills can do more harm than good

In 2019, news broke of a very disturbing lockdown drill — colloquially referred to as an "active shooter drill" — at an elementary school in Indiana. "The ones that involve making realistic sounds — they're aggressive, or predatory acting, or deception — those types of events we think have far greater impact on children in terms of emotional distress, particularly among children who are anxious or have been through traumatic experiences in their past," Dr. David Schonfeld, a developmental behavioral pediatrician and director of the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles, told Salon. "During one recent live exercise in which high school students were deceived to believe it was a real event, children sobbed hysterically, vomited, or fainted, and some children sent farewell notes to parents." "During one recent live exercise in which high school students were deceived to believe it was a real event, children sobbed hysterically, vomited, or fainted, and some children sent farewell notes to parents," the AAP wrote in its policy statement. "Oftentimes the conversation about the psychological impact of these drills comes as a result of cases where they've made the news, or frankly, they've been done horribly; we don't set a school on fire to practice a fire drill, we don't need to simulate an active shooter to practice a lockdown drill."