Title

This dissertation critically examines psychological and criminological determinants and their intersections regarding the emergence of school shootings, aiming to advance a more nuanced understanding of the underlying causes. Integrating comparative case study methodology, it analyses the cumulation of personality traits, behavioural pathologies, adverse family environments, school-based experiences, and broader social dynamics that can produce the trajectory towards extreme violence. This research operationalises an expanded CSAM, which analyses and recognises school shootings as the outcome of prolonged and compounding psychological and systematic stressors, not as isolated incidents of deviance. This study draws on an interdisciplinary framework that shifts theory and socio-political analysis and applies it to the multifactorial complexity of school shooter profiles. The fundamental findings reveal consistent patterns of complicated psychological hardship, institutional neglect, and social alienation, which are all exacerbated through structural shortcomings within early intervention and the lack of multi-agency communication. The following discussion critiques and analyses the ethical, practical and theoretical implications of prediction-based models while challenging and reducing reductionist narratives that obscure the socio-political context of violence. The proposal of a multi-level prevention strategy whose primary focus is to uphold and push for early detection, collaborative safeguarding and systemic reform, this dissertation contributes insights into both practical policy development and academic discourse.