INDIANAPOLIS — They're sobering statistics with lasting emotional impacts.
Over the past six years, IU Health's Riley Hospital for Children, a level one pediatric trauma center, has treated 229 children for gunshot wounds.
Instead of enjoying summer break, an increasing number of children are hurting in the hospital with gunshot wounds.
These Indianapolis kids and teens are wheeled into the ER, their small bodies broken by bullets — but emotional scars are just as damaging.
The trauma and psychological team at Riley see it daily.
"Effects on sleep, effects on school, thinking about the legal involvement that oftentimes follows," said Dr. Zachary Adams, clinical psychologist at Riley Hospital for Children. "There's tremendous amounts of disruption and upheaval, never mind the physical and emotional harm."
Riley has already treated 23 children for gunshot wounds this year, including four since Friday.
That's a mix of unintentional and intentional or violent shootings.
It's also on track to outpace last year, when 41 kids came through Riley's ER with gunshot wounds.
Thirty-two of those incidents were violent, like a drive-by or intentional shooting.
The rest were accidental, like someone cleaning a gun or a child playing with a gun and the weapon going off, causing injury.
Adams said emotional impacts on kids who've been shot and survive can last years, even decades.
"Sometimes it comes in the form of concerns like post-traumatic stress or depression or changes in mood," Adams said. "With real little kids, we might see things like being more clingy or backsliding in their developmental milestones, disruptions to sleep that sort of thing. Older kids may be more withdrawn, experience depression or PTSD."
It's not just the young victims.
Ripple effects after a shooting injury extend to parents, siblings, classmates and neighbors.
"And in some of our neighborhoods and communities, this is a fairly routine experience, unfortunately," Adams said. "So if you then sort of zoom out a little bit and think about what it's like in those schools and those congregations and those workplaces where folks have experienced directly or indirectly firearm injury, you start to get a sense of the scale of what this looks like, not just on the day of the event but as people are going about their day-to-day lives."
Riley Hospital for Children is focused on helping children heal, both physically and emotionally, from gun trauma.
But the team is also focused on gun violence prevention. They provide free gun locks for families at their safety store.