NOT GOOD, Connecticut shooter was diagnosed with Aspergers..

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I just saw the news and am VERY upset they reported the shooter with Aspergers too.

The TODAY Show just aired the blog story, "I am Adam Lanza's Mother"

In case anyone doesn't know, here is the link about her severely disabled son.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/1 ... 11009.html

My 8 year old Aspie said this morning "I have Aspergers and I would never do anything like that to someone. I don't think he did that because he had Aspergers, I think he did it because he was a sad and angry person that needed help but got really upset because he thought the world was going to end or something."

I never connected that until my son said it- his Mom was a survivalist hoarding supplies, etc., and we are- what- a week away from 12/21/12? Maybe he freaked out about that and combined with his other issues just lost it?

Either way, he messed up. Since he's gone, I doubt we'll ever know all of the true reasons why. Speculation is really dangerous, and can be really hurtful to people, especially the Aspie community in this case. Thoughts and prayers obviously go out to the families of the victims, but also to those of you who are distraught or angry about the sweeping generalizations that people are making about the other people who deal with Aspergers on a daily basis. We love y'all!

This is not good for us at all. Now people are going to see us as a bunch of sociopaths who have no empathy or feelings. Are we all going to be locked up in asylums now?

I see a lot of articles calling for reason and intelligence. Warms my heart.

I see a lot of commenters spilling hate and fear. Chills me. I guess there will always be hateful people looking for someone to kick. After all, if you've met one neurotypical, you've met one neurotypical. Most of them are completely harmless. Trick is not to let the bad apples get you down.

Well Grandma seems to be picking herself up. She says, "Our chorous director brought her granddaughter to practice. Such red hair! Ruth says she has autism. I don't care. She's a lovely child! Very polite. Always has a smile for me..."

A child would get up from its deathbed to smile at Grandma. She's one of those people. I'm glad she's got her Italian up, isn't being upset by it anymore.

Ruth never has a good word to say for anyone, unless it's about her kids' social-climbing or she stands to look good saying it. IIRC, kids usually want to get away from her as fast as they can. We used to call her "Ruthless" when she taught Bible school when I was a kid, and pray we'd end up in Miss Mary's class instead.

My relatives were actually surprisingly cool. About the time 6 kids under 6 started running through the house screaming, they seemed to decide that since the ringleaders were mine it would probably be perfectly all right if I wanted to mind the children.

The kids had a really lovely time.

As a straight white male, I have been lucky in that I have not had to deal with wide-scale judging of me or having to listen to stereotypes that directly affect me or are directed towards my "kind." That changed Friday. When I hear the "discussions" of Adam Lanza and the non-accusation accusation of AS and AS types as being dangerous...it's hard. It's VERY hard to deal with.

Why?

Because when I
hear Lanza being described...I hear ME. I hear ME being described...even though, of course, I would NEVER do what he did. And I am angry that I even have to qualify that statement. And as someone who has to live within this skin, I know the power of the words used. They describe him as mentally ill--no doubt--but then they say "Aspergers" following that, and the two are NOT the same. The world is lazy and they will take that as being equatable...and it's not.

Yesterday was rough. I went into shutdown mode, and I don't really remember much of yesterday. I painted, trying to deal with a reeling mind thinking and thinking and trying to not think about the things in the world. It's hard.

This morning I had to force myself to get out of bed.

When I turn on the news and turn on the Facebook and turn on the world, I find a world (rightly) in shock that they're trying to make some sort of sense out of senselessness. It's understandable--it is a natural human reaction.

I am Lanza, but I am not Lanza. I consider myself fortunate that all of my friends on my friends list aren't idiots--or that I don't see the idiots, whichever the case may be.

Every single report I have seen so far does not definitively state with any proof that Adam Lanza had been diagnosed with AS or autism.

Every report (that I have so far seen) is ambiguously worded. The closest ANY of them have come is to have stated that "An official" stated he was told that Adam's brother Ryan said that he had it. This is at best third party information. HEARSAY!

The earliest report I could find came from the AP, which stated that Ryan told authorities he and his family believed Adam had AS. No diagnostic report has been released that I can find. No official statement has been released by the investigators that I can find.

What I don't understand is why people are helping to spread this "information" when it hasn't been substantiated yet. If it had, it would be BIG news, and ought to be easy to find. Not buried somewhere deep in the bowels of the internet.

So we read it on the internet. Must be true, right?

Really? When will we learn? Even the reports that claim "An official" said he'd been diagnosed, don't name the official. The "official" wasn't present at the interview, and isn't authorized by his own admission to release any information about the investigation. So the reporters heard it from him who heard it from someone else, and there's no telling how many people THAT information went through before it even got to him.

Not exactly a confirmed report. Not one report that I've seen yet has been confirmed. Not one. What makes it even worse is that based solely on these unsubstantiated reports, network agencies, bloggers and websites, social media, and even here, are rushing to the defense of AS as not being linked to violent behaviors, which can appear as defensive posturing.

It's sad really, that so many are rushing to explain that AS, even if he had it, couldn't be the cause of this tragedy when we don't even know for sure he did have it. Now the internet is inundated with discussion of AS's likelihood or lack thereof of being linked to this tragedy, when it is still possible that he didn't even have AS at all, and was merely suspected of having it by his family.

When we as members of a website filled with Aspies start repeating these unsubstantiated reports, it concerns me that such posts here making definitive statements from users with AS and ASD's appear to confirm the validity of such reports, when such confirmation may not exist at all.

We complain about irresponsible reporting by the media, but we ought to take a close look at whether we are being responsible ourselves.

As far as I am concerned, all this hoopla about Adam having AS or autism, is nothing but that. HOOPLA! I'm reserving my thoughts and judgements until the investigation is finished and released to the public.

Yesterday I wrote this on Facebook:

You see what they did there?

In other thoughts, I wonder if there is a link between the use of antipsychotics and violence.

Hubby says nothing would ever have come of it because I could barely manifest the will to take myself to the bathroom, but I seem to remember fading in and out of consciousness on the couch during the Lost Summer I spent eating risperidone being terrified by my own dreams of violent rampages-- things I had not experienced before and have not experienced since.

I think it would be more rage at thinking of having to live like that despite having done nothing, rage at being told over and over and over who and what you are and what horrors you simply must be capable of, rather than the drug itself...

...but I'm tempted to do some research and post what I find.

One thing that worries me is the retro-activity of judgments and the confusions.
Even though Lanza's character before these horrible events can seem "troubled" or "strange" for the "typical human", it is pretty understandable if he has AS and/or differences in functioning and personality. Qualifying him - before he has done these acts, or begun to scheme them - of troubled, or extending to the rest of his life the implications of his last actions, seems wrong to me. But it's kind of always what a great deal of people do, alas. The ways of the media seem to amplify this aspect : you can find comments of Internet users who, commenting the photo of Lanza when he was young, say that they see evil in him, and dangerous idiocies of the kind. And, of course, on another level, you have the link between Asperger - or the differences of personality etc of the person - and the shootings as it has been described in this topic, with some people frowning upon the syndrome. Because if people are able to extend the "evilness" of Lanza upon his past, they're also prone, of course, to extend upon the Aspergian characteristics the potential of what he did in a general way ; and it is so because they have at the base a natural tendency to be suspicious of those who are different from them. Thus is it sad that it be fueled by apparently believable discourses to their eyes. Leading to the conclusion that the "weird" person who doesn't look in the eyes of his comrades and doesn't socialize or has troubles doing it can't but be troubled and potentially dangerous (of course, people forget easily that we are all potentially dangerous, it's a point others have shown in this topic). Leading to a potential for more ostracism towards this person, maybe bullying and, ironically and occasionally, the very thing these persons would have wanted to avoid but can have been a part in producing, namely the fact that in retaliation the ostracized person could do harm (I'm talking abstractly here, not about Lanza).

Yes. Given the short portrait given of Lanza before he did these killings, it can speak to many persons, who have Asperger, who are great loners, etc. Given the reactions of some in the public and the confusions or shortcuts of thought of the media, it's understandable to feel uneasy. Journalists and even specialists or "vulgarizators" should act with caution when it comes to the topic of the link between a condition and events of that kind : most people have not a very subtle apprehension of causality and that kind of "link", and don't frankly have the time or the will to study the very complex areas of psychology, psychiatry (and, in another plane, philosophy, ethics and morality), leading to not very solid, and often wrong, conclusions.

Concerning guns... I'm French, and many here are Americans, as it seems. Is this topic the greatest difference between the two sides of the Atlantic ? I don't know, but it's clearly one of them. On this matter, from a foreign observer's point of view, the situation of the US is clearly worrying.

Last edited by Ascagne on 17 Dec 2012, 5:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That sounds kind of similar to what Kyuuchan told me, and those are the words I'm living by. Thanks

WOW!
heart in throat stuff for me.

I am the wife of an adult recently dianoised Aspie (age 55!! !)
who's meltdowns have been acute for several months since the very recent diagnosis.

He is on and off just like this.... what I assume is a fictional adaptation of truth. It has been wild.

This what to me is well written artical was way to vivid and true to life of someone in relation to a ASD. I think it will scare people worse and heat up the witch hunt. Maybe we are lucky the word Aspergers is out of fashion thanks to the DMS V

What do the rest of you think from your perspective?

I had my own AS dianoises 6years ago. Yes double Aspie marriage! we found each other about 20 years ago after too many bad relationships. Lid only came off with his midlife crisis and anger getting revealed.

His too strong mother dying seemed to start the letting of IT all out and it has been hell on wheels ever since.

But back to our joint interests.
ANYone hearing anything about Adam's mother?

The little bits I can not confirm indicate ? a really good person but possibly very fearful herself!

Things getting said like she was expecting the end, hording food and buying guns, kept to her self.

Had had an almight fight with the school districk prior to pulling Adam out of school.

Have I got any of that right? Oh also said to have divorced her husband who his sister said 'left her pretty well off' and she did not need to work.

None of this stuff is for sure just more of the stuff floating around.

Seeing their house from the air was stunning as here in England something that size could be cut into about 28 flats. I kid you not.

But was he a genetic Aspie with comorbid sp? PDDs

I wait to hear made public what the head cop said they had recovered that more or less gave them motive etc etc.

A mother

Spock Daughter
From Idaho but very near Stonehenge

Please do. My adadotal sp? fact is that my husbands 2-3 rd month of being on respidone has been a long slide into very serious (at times) violence. Yesterday he cracked his head on the wall so badly he has had a worring headache today. the bathroom door he cracked wks ago with a head butt looks at me each time I enter.

Self violence but also talk of car crashing etc. Mild quiet well liked timid fellow who suffers deep embarssement following.

The explosions fulled by paranoia against me come and go. But he is terrified of his now almost constant black mindedness and out loud mutterings.

We are both scard and fighting the system for a medication review. Getting told it is best to wait 6 months before any changes. New appointment battle tomarrow. me in tow and advocating big time or else!

Anyway from here without many other variables I SEE violence and am living it due to the theraputic trial from hell.

Let us know what you find out!

Spocks Daughter

We still don’t know what’s wrong with Michael. Autism spectrum, ADHD, Oppositional Defiant or Intermittent Explosive Disorder have all been tossed around at various meetings with probation officers and social workers and counselors and teachers and school administrators. He’s been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work.

the above paragraph from the above article.....'He’s been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals'

its pretty obvious to me that medication can trigger these unwanted behaviours

The elephant in the room is medication!! !!

the woman who wrote the re-printed article had a difficult time with her own son
and she could see her situation as being alot like that of the CT shooter's mother,
so if both kids were placed on medication, are the parallels indeed more complete?

I am so glad you said this...i distinctively remember seeing that "I am Adam Mother" article before...at another shooting...with another perpetrator's name on it, written for another blog. My memory's pretty on-point, but i can't seem to find evidence of it.

I feel for her kid, because that's pretty horrid, putting your kid's issues out to the world in such a negative way....