Do Children's Mental Health Symptoms Impact Their Access to Unlocked Guns at Home?

OBJECTIVE To test whether changes in children's mental health symptoms predict changes in their access to unlocked guns at home. METHOD This study used data from a longitudinal cohort study of 1,420 youth and their parents in the Southeastern US. Parents were assessed annually up to eight times about their child's mental health (i.e., conduct, oppositional defiant, depression, and anxiety symptoms) between ages 9 to 16 (6,674 observations total). Parents were also asked whether there were guns in their home and whether they were locked. Generalized linear mixed-effect models were used to test associations between changes in symptoms and in-home gun access adjusted for sociodemographic variables. Children with or without access to unlocked guns at baseline were differentiated in analyses. RESULTS Sixty-six percent of parents reported that their child had access to an unlocked gun at some point between ages 9-16. In homes in which children did not have gun access at baseline, changes in youth mental health symptoms did not increase or decrease the likelihood of child having access to unlocked guns subsequently. In homes in which children did have guns access at baseline, however, increases in some mental health symptoms (either oppositional defiant (OR= 0.43, CI=[0.35, 0.53], p<0.001), or depression symptom (OR=0.74, CI=[0.59, 0.92], p<0.008)) were associated with reduced gun access at the next timepoint. These associations were strongest for adolescents. CONCLUSION In an area where gun culture is strong, parents reported making safety-conscious adjustments to their children's gun access when their children displayed emotional or behavioral symptoms.