Anyone else feeling annoyed by the Aspergers connection

[Eliza22]

.... With the recent tragic shootings in Conneticut? Adam Lanza was thought to have undiagnosed Aspergers. He was a socially isolated child. A near outcast at school. Norwegian, Anders Brejvic was also thought to be on the spectrum.

I read The Times stories this morning and just felt very nervous at the way they kept going back to the autism / Aspergers connection.

Anyone else?

Sorry, ZZZZ, are you having a go at me for saying, that I find the media reports jumping on the "he was an isolated homeschooled oddball thought to have had social disabilities/Aspergers bandwagon" offensive?

Personally, until there's proof of what drove this young man to such a deplorable action, I'd rather the reports kept their supposition to themselves. Last year, my son had a group of 6 or 7 boys much older than he, mimicking his walk/talk on the way to school. It's enough to make any sensitive child withdraw (and be angry). My son was blissfully unaware of what was going on on these occasions. I was not.

ZZZZ, how am I causing offence in posing the question "does anyone else feel a sense of unease at the media pointing a finger toward an Aspergers connection?"

You're suggesting I've "wheeled out" an appropriately disabled (fictitious) child, in order to place this post?

If you look, there are often ladies on this site who say "no children" on their profile and then post photos of them.

I have a child. And he has a diagnosis of ASD and OCD. I know of what I speak in terms of autism disability. There is no underhand hidden meaning in my decision to say I have no children. When relevant, as in this case, I state my position clearly.

This is a very odd thread....

We know the mother had sought help while her son was growing up.

We know she felt that homeschool was her best option, (unsual for a teaching professional).

We know the shooter was undiagnosed ASD. If I am assessed for a disorder, and found not to have it why is it in anyone's interests to tar all the sufferers of a condition I don't have?

We can therefore conclude that at some point this man was assessed and found NOT to have ASD. We can also can conclude that someone professional somewhere in failing to diagnose what the hell the issue really was prior to this tragedy. has let down a whole community.

There are all kinds of condtions that impact the brain from Lyme disease to premature dementia, to bi-polar, to oxygen starvation ffs. A post mortem examination of the shooters brain MIGHT be able to diagnose the cause, but sadly most likely we'll never know.

Lots of therapy available for all sorts, (if you have the MONEY!) but not the sort of bone headed stupidity that leads to this type of tragedy.

The stupididty of the media does my head in. The politicians screaming for gun restrictions instead of offering to aid the bereaved practically has been no better. Even a tragedy as horrific as this one, doesn't seem to wake those in power up from their self absorbition long enough to see that children & young people with mental health issues need prioritising and treating promptly.

What concerns me is how many other parents are out there crying into the wind for help they'll never recieve, how many other tragedies will we have to witness before common sense is allowed back into the arena. Services in some areas of child mental health & developmental pead's are so poor on BOTH sides of the atlantic that when you sit an analyse it, it's a miracle more incidents like this don't occur. (In China a 22 year old murdered a similar numnber with a knife last month, so guns are not the key issue).

My head goes round in circles till I conclude you just can't fix stupid & we all have to suffer for it.

Also agree with coff - too wierd for tea by half!

The deeper my life takes me down the ASD rabbit hole (one son with ASD, one stepson, an ex partner + a cousin) the more I realise just how wide the range of differences between individuals is.

The police told me after my son was attacked earlier this year that they like to know who the ASD individuals in a locale are, because sadly they are a group likely statistically to become victims of violent crime. (Often they don't twig the social cues that lead to the sort of street knife etc crime that's become so prevalent & so don't leg it in time like the NT would).

imho they back what they told me with the way they treat the 23 year old on my estate. (Aspie with a 1st class degree). He KNOWS the police will help him out if he gets himself in a pickle, like getting lost in a strange area etc. He carries an NAS card with him, on their advice, especially now he's a Dad so feels a bit vulnerable sometimes asking for baby change facilities etc when out shopping.

This incident wasn't a bar fight, smoking a bit of blow, or a bit of shoplifting - that sort of thing can happen with any youth that is failed by the education system SN/ASD or not. Most parents of NT kids fret about their kids "getting into trouble". Many NT parents feel failed by schools and home ed. (Statistically home ed kids have better outcomes than those who are schooled btw at Uni)

Pre-planned mass murder is on a whole different level to the majority of crimes committed by young offenders. It's in a completely different category altogether.

Ilike - I think you are expressing yourself very clearly and I completely agree with your points.

I have also read Tony Attwood on ASD and crime links. As a parent of one, perhaps two, boys with ASD, I am mindful of this.

It is generally accepted that people with ASD are socially awkward and often don't fit in. It would (sadly) follow that very rarely this may manifest itself in extreme behaviour, depending on the individual involved and other factors.

I also don't like any casual/lazy links to the condition and crime in news reporting either though - we don't want any additional stigma to be created...

Anyone being picked on for being weird or different in any way whatsoever is a risk for developing a grudge against society which they might one day be provoked sufficiently into acting upon. That's a failing in society first and foremost, not an inbuilt tendency to extreme violence in people who are picked on. And I seriously doubt there has been sufficient research to assess whether a severely provoked person with aspergers will react more violently when they finally snap than a person with depression, schizophrenia, a chaotic family background, a physical disability, a cosmetic disability, etc, etc. It's about personality and environment and there are plenty of violent, bad tempered people with a grudge out there without aspergers syndrome - in fact, far, far more people like that without aspergers than with, I would have thought.... unless "aspergers" is to be redefined as anyone that people find easy to pick on and who loses their temper easily.

I have institutional access to the paper published in Criminology and Criminal Justice linked by maria. PM me if you want a copy. Don't forget this is approaching the issue from the perspective of the researching the criminal justice system and the proportion of that social grouping who have AS, or some other SEN (as opposed to the effect of race, class, gender, mental health etc on prevalence) rather than arguing that all people with AS have 'criminal' tendencies (not that criminologists believe in innate tendencies in any case). So there may be an 'association' at the social level without implying that there is individual increased risk.

zzzz I believe that the default if you haven't completed your profile is that it says you have no children, it really isn't remotely suspicious. I am off to check whether my profile says that!

zzzz
If you are thinking it was me saying the failed school HE no diagnosis thing is what has 'caused' this horrific tragedy then I apologise, because that is not at all what I meant. I don't think the HE thing has any bearing on the situation at all, except as evidence that at some point he was struggling in ordinary school, and someone way upthread asked what evidence I had that he had been struggling in school and the fact that he went almost through high school and then was taken out for HE would suggest that. That is all.

I think - of course it is all speculation at this stage - in this particular situation mental illness and ready access to multiple guns, plus an unhealthy interest in guns and a lot of time spent in a gun range (according to reports I read today) were much more significant than the possibility of him being on the spectrum being causal in any way.

I want to put the no diagnosis thing to bed as well. I have tried to explain that in my case, sharing the diagnosis with my son has immensely improved his attitude, he is far less defensive and is much more open to talking about his difficulties and working on strategies with us since he knew he was on the spectrum. I am not talking about any special 'undisclosed therapies' or anything, I am talking about the cognitive shift in our son since he found out about his diagnosis, and how it has provided for us a window of opportunity and shifted him away from presumptions of blame if, for example, someone brushes past him in the corridor he used to think they were deliberately pushing him, now he understands that it's likely that they were simply trying to get somewhere and were not paying attention, and because he is very sensitive to light touch what others would perceive as a brush past he feels as much more intense. So he is reaching more logical conclusions as a result of knowing his diagnosis than what he would have done in the past, and so he is not building up resentment against his class mates as he used to. That is all I meant. In our case having a diganosis has made a massive difference to my sn's view of the world. I wasn't talking baout any special therapies or anything. I understand this has been completely misunderstood or considered to be weird parenting up thread but I think it's probably the way I have explained it. And of course I made the mistake of generalising from our experience and assuming others have found the same.

FWIW, the slide I was referring to on the MacKay lecture is the one labelled 'behaviour in the community' which is where he was talking about any particular risks in this population (he was referring to undiagnosed men at the point of committing a crime) and the risk factors on the slide are 'Lack of insight, failure to understand social rules, impulsivity, and the deadly combination of alcohol and an already compromised frontal cortex' (his words, not mine). I don't know specifically what level of association there is and keeponkeepingon does a much better job than me of explaining what I was trying to say.

Surely in any potential mass murderer, the underlying influences are complex and multifactoral. So every random adverse factor adds one more straw to the camel's back / one more hole in the Swiss cheese / whichever cliche you prefer.

So, if they happen to have head injury + AS + divorced parents + access to guns + personality disorder + alcohol + a migraine that day + a parking ticket + mild suicidal thoughts, slightly better support around the divorce, or the AS might have accidentally helped, as would a less strict clamping regime, a rusty gun or better migraine pills. But none of those factors predict the event.

And the mass murderers without AS will have similarly complex mixed influences, but the wider public tends to cope with senseless tragedy via glib answers and easy certainties. Blaming AS is a bit more socially acceptable than blaming single parents. Same principle though, look for an outsider-type to scapegoat.

Plus it's wrong, but deliberately and knowingly choosing 'wrong' is special talent in human beings (though probably a bit less common in those with ASD)

I too am finding the ASD/mass murderer link deeply offensive. I follow Simon Baron Cohen on twitter and he too is promoting that link. He tweeted the truly awful 'I am Adam Lanza's mother' blog post.

Adam Lanza was also a fatherless bairn. Shall we start a witch hunt against single mothers?

The bottom line seems to me that Ma Lanza had a house full of guns. I suspect the US pro gun lobby and their media sympathisers is trying to divert attention from that by going on about Adam Lanza's supposed ASD.

is = are

Ok, perhaps I'm being a little naive here but I would have thought finding out the root cause of this awful tragedy and his motives for doing so was more important than blaming guns.

Surely, if he does have Aspergers or a personality disorder or anything else then they need to start looking at providing adequate support for people in his families situation. I am certainly not excusing what he has done, I just think this would be a better way to prevent such a thing ever happening again than banning guns or complaining about the label he is being given.

I feel so awful for those poor families. My heart is with them.