Mooresville school shooting plot shows long-term toll of Indiana's opioid crisis
In 2021-22, Indiana hit a record high number of Hoosier deaths due to drug overdoses, 2,755. According to last Friday's publicly available probable cause affidavit, one of those deaths was Trinity Shockley's mother.
Shockley was a senior in Mooresville Schools until Feb. 20 when her plans for a Valentine's Day mass shooting in the cafeteria were discovered. This is the same school my daughter attends, the same cafeteria my daughter would have been sitting in with her friends during the planned attack.
Hicks: How to create equal opportunities in post-DEI Indiana
More than 320,000 children lost a parent to drug overdoses during the opioid crisis, according to the most recent data. Shockley's case is a stark reminder that efforts to combat the opioid crisis have entered a new phase. While the first two years of support have focused on supporting addicts directly, a better understanding of and support for the children of addicts deserves attention.
More than 57,500 Hoosier children were affected by the opioid crisis, with the highest concentration in rural areas. This is more than the number of children affected by autism and childhood diabetes combined.
The effects of having a parent that is an addict or has substance usage disorder is widely studied and very clear:
Higher rates of child abuse and neglect
Lower academic achievement
Higher rates of family breakdown
Higher rates of mental health issues
Lower rates of family involvement and support
Increased rates of incarceration as an adult
Increased rates of addiction and substance usage disorder as adults
The emotional and long-term toll of navigating life with a parent that is an addict is not just overwhelming Hoosier children and families, but also costing our state systems billions.
According to the most recent estimates, children with a parent that's an addict cost our state $37,000 in health care, $44,000 in child welfare and social programs, and $186,000 in special education costs. Pediatricians, schools, therapists, and social services are increasingly seeing more high-need cases at greater frequencies than ever before.
This means state agencies are overwhelmed by providing services and supporting kids displaying high acuity behaviors. These trends are not set to slow anytime soon. By 2030, the innocent victims of the opioid crisis are set to have cost the state $10.5 billion.
Indiana received $980 million in opioid settlement dollars to be doled out over 18 years. If there is one thing we have learned from this crisis, it's that only treating the addict is ineffective because it leaves family members like Shockley untreated.
We've also learned that rural areas were hit far harder than urban areas. The challenges to providing support in rural areas have proven to be far more difficult and have shown less efficacy to date. To curb the systemic impact and give these innocent victims a shot at a healthy future, we need to work smarter not harder.
We need to be investing opioid settlement dollars into evidence-based, data-driven approaches that support inner agency collaborations of all the systems that support the children of addicts. We need infrastructure that ensures data from each of these agencies are talking to each other in tangible ways. We need to focus on efforts that coordinate data and responses across health care, law enforcement, child welfare agencies and education to reduce redundancies and ensure kids are getting the best we have to offer. We need to support innovative approaches that address academic achievement, health outcomes and workforce development needs in the professional areas meeting the needs of children who have a parent battling addiction.
Most importantly, rural Indiana needs more support.
As a Mooresville mom, it's difficult to express my gratitude to Mooresville Schools and the police department for their handling of last week's incident. Their quick and decisive action ensured that all the children in our community were safe.
As an educational professional who has been working with kids with mental health needs for more than 20 years, I can't help but be impressed by the teachers, counselors, administrators, school nurses, coaches, staff members and officers who served bravely last week.
If you follow Mooresville Schools on social media, you know their hashtag is #BeMoore. After last week, I would argue that their hashtag should be #DoingMoore because they are clearly doing more with less to support our kids.
Addie Angelov is the co-founder and CEO of the Paramount Health Data Project.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Mooresville school shooting plot points to opioid crisis | Opinion
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