February 16, 2022 

Dear P4GVP,

This week marks the fourth anniversary of the mass shooting that occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people and injuring 17 others. This week also marks the third anniversary of the official founding of Psychiatrists for Gun Violence Prevention (P4GVP), a collective of concerned psychiatrists and other allied health and mental healthcare professionals who began discussing ways in which our community could contribute to reducing the carnage of gun violence in the United States. Over the past three years, we have launched and maintained a website (psychgvp.org), which serves as a clearing house for information and resources related to gun violence prevention, including its intersection with mental health, and we have signed onto or co-sponsored numerous GVP-related events, petitions, and letters in support of common sense GVP policies. Unfortunately, also over the past three years, gun violence's tragic toll in the United States has continued, causing tens of thousands of deaths and traumatizing communities with hundreds of mass shooting events.

Although the current administration in the White House is openly supportive of GVP, there continues to be stalemate at the federal level, with legislation that would move the cause of GVP forward unable to advance in the Senate, and a Supreme Court seemingly poised to strike down local GVP laws. At the same time, in-person advocacy and organizing efforts have been stymied by a global pandemic now entering its third year. However, there are glimmers of hope. COVID-19 vaccination has allowed in-person activities to begin returning, and there has been renewed focus on community safety including GVP within many state and local governments. In the year ahead, P4GVP hopes to renew our efforts to foster conversations about how psychiatrists and other mental health professionals can contribute to constructive dialogues about GVP, provide and organize relevant GVP-related resources to our colleagues and the public, and continue to support the important grassroots GVP work of many local advocacy organizations across the country.

Along these lines, P4GVP plans to continue to spread the word about our work at the upcoming American Psychiatric Association Annual Convention in New Orleans in May. In the meantime, please visit our website for updates (www.psychgvp.org), join our Facebook group if you haven't already (https://www.facebook.com/groups/psychgvp/), and spread the word about joining us (it's free! Link to join: https://www.psychgvp.org/membership). You can also contact us if you have questions or would like to get more involved with P4GVP: info@psychgvp.org.

Here's to a healthy and safe rest of 2022.

In solidarity,

Victoria Dinsell, Rebecca Capasso, Charles Lee, Marc Manseau

Co-founders, P4GVP