May I first say, I wouldn't worry too much that there has been a few isolated incidents where someone who has killed someone else had a diagnosis with ASD.
Like anything in life, one of a large number doing something doesn't mean anything for the rest of the greater number.
Treating all people with ASD as exactly the same would be inaccurate stereotyping.
As the old saying goes, meet one person with ASD, you have met one person with ASD.
That said and done, however,
I think due to how the various societies on this planet treat people with ASD is likely going to increase the risk of one of us doing something unusual, including in my reference to the term "unusual" includes going off the rails and lashing out, or committing suicide, although, i would also include in the term unusual other things that people may actually see as positive, such as finding an outlet for our negative and destructive emotions (such as found in the creative arts, music, or in some more unconventional hobbies or intense interests).
Having ASD, and knowing a few people with ASD, I would say, that at present (the present way our circumstances often end up in life)
is that having ASD does increase the risk of us:
Becoming isolated
having less friends
having less intimate relationships
having less success in employment and thus less success materialistically in life
having less material success in life often does then force us to live life with low social status
living with low social status limits our options in life
which includes limiting how many holidays we have, how many possessions we have, what living accommodation
we end up living in
people who have low social status and live in the bottom tier of living accommodation are known to be exposed to
more psychological stress than those who have higher social status and better quality living accommodation.
In some cases, the low social status and poor quality accommodation may have more negative implications than simply psychologically demeaning due to social status, and this also may have an impact as to how much daily stress the individual is exposed to. Take for example, the ASD known trait of sensory impairment.
If a person with ASD who is hypersensitive to auditory sensory overload is forced to live in poor quality living accommodation, and is constantly exposed to sound sources that cause him / her to daily uncontrollable distress,
then that ASD person is going to be getting extremely distressed on a daily basis without any time for respite.
That is enough in my experience ( i suffer from hypersensitivity to auditory stimuli) to make a hypersensitive person go psychotic.
I am not violent, but, like every human being, if you subject an individual to constant levels of sensory input on a 24 hour basis to the extent that the person has no time to recover, then they are going to end up psychotic.
(I believe in the case mentioned, the man did suffer from sensory hypersensitivity problems, mentioned by his mother).
Now, if a person goes psychotic has already has issues with life that he finds difficult, then these issues are likely to become his focus during such a psychotic episode.
And as the information given already mentions, that his main issues were his loneliness and lack of having a girl friend
(which when i was younger, before i had my first girl friend, before i had lost my virginity and later on, before i got married to my ex-wife, where my issues as well). I can understand how upsetting that is, how humiliating it is, especially when you are young and have never had even one girl friend. Goodness, the pressure to be normal, but also the desire to experience all the great things that you hear about that everyone else rants about, and
where ever you look, you see happy couples flirting and kissing.
It does make you feel lonely when you are in that place. And in some cases, society doesn't make any effort to help,
such people who are so frustrated in their difficult circumstances, I mean having ASD does give us a handicap in the extremely difficult game of trying to find a suitable mate / partner for a relationship, and in some cases, cruel "successful" people who have no trouble attracting partners some times also like to rub our lack of success in our faces.
Such treatment is going to make anyone get angry.
So, you have this guy, who has these very normal coming of age issues (although which are going on longer than normal, quiet likely due to the problems he has with communicating and "fitting in" but also made more complex due to his low social status, lack of disposable income through lack of employment .... you need money to go on dates...)..
And then you have him move to a new area that he knows even less amounts of people which he and his mother have done in hope to improve their chances of creating a good life, only to find life at the new place is just as hard as the old place, if not even harder.
Then to complicate matters (and to put temptation into his hands), you have this guys main outlet in life and main intense interest being firearms.
Now, add the stressor, the noise factor. Which as mentioned before, is the one thing that makes the guy go psychotic.
So. you have a guy, down on his luck, no job, no girl friend, with no way out of his maze of issues,
angry at society, and perhaps blaming organised religion for contributing to his problems (i am not sure how this factor works into the story, but perhaps there is a link. Perhaps religion was the reason why his parents split up).
So, already extremely frustrated with his circumstances, in a place, that due to his own thinking process,
he can see no positive future, he then is exposed to daily unavoidable stressors that cause him to go psychotic,
and when psychotic, he freely has access to as many firearms as he wants.
Well, i don't think it takes a genius to work out what happens next. Not saying that I agree with what he did,
but in some ways, you put any human being under the same type of circumstances for long enough ( such as lasting his entire life ) then I would say a fair amount of people regardless as to whether they suffer from ASD will end up doing the same.
To say that mentally ill people commit such crimes would be fair. As people who are mentally well balanced generally do not think about murdering anyone.
Having access to firearms does increase the likelihood of gun crimes happening.
And of course not everyone in the US is going to commit a gun crime, but not everyone in the US
suffers from a mental illness that has a particular dynamic that is likely going to make them a risk.
One thing I do know, is that, in places where guns are not in regular circulation.
Gun crimes are extremely rare.
I live on an island, where the only guns accessible to the general public are to be found in shooting clubs and farms.
We have had almost no gun crimes over the last 100 years, apart from one or two extremely minor ones, where the only person who has ended up hurt is the person committing the crime (suicide).
Although the population of the island that i live on is only 120,000 (so less people), but the size of the island is very small (7 miles x 5 miles), so very claustrophobic and hard to get away from people. There is also a massive divide between the wealthy and the poor, with some of the wealthiest people in the world (billionaires) living doors away from people who live in social housing.
Housing is priced at a premium and finding sound proofed housing in the lowest of price ranges is impossible.
So, shootings as mentioned above may have happened in the island that i live on if firearms had been accessible.
However, due to no firearms in circulation, there have been no such shootings. Thank God.
Lastly, I would say speaking from a sensory hypersensitive persons perspective, one of the biggest factors that reduced the levels of distress that i suffer from on a daily basis apart from sound proofing of my living accommodation is the medication that i am on for anxiety caused by the sensory hypersensitivities.
The start of last year i started with a different doctor, who actually listened to me and took me off SSNRI's
and put me on to the requested Clomipromine tricyclic antidreppresants in combination with low dose valium for
meltdowns.
The result is that i am a great deal less distressed and less aggravated by sensory sources.
I am still hypersensitive but the meds have reduced the amount of distress I experience
The other meds i was on, cymbalta / venlafaxine were bad for me (and other hypersensitive ASD types)
as both meds are SSNRI and boost Noradrenaline. This is bad as noradrenaline if boosted too much makes people
edgy, stressy and aggressive!! ! (and it was given to treat anxiety!! ! doh!! !)
most doctors aren't educated to a high enough level to understand what affect the meds do to a hypersensitive.
Hypersensitives due to having abnormal sensory parts of the brain, will react more to less amounts of noradrenaline
So, SSNRI's are not a good idea.
Clomipromine however regulates noradrenaline, and also slightly sedates the senses.
Which is what a person with hypersensitivities needs!! !
If you are hypersensitive to sensory information, please consider changing meds to Clomipromine and occasional use diazepan. As i think it is a better fit (although due to how many variables, i can not say it will be perfect. but it is worth a try!).
Otherwise. if you are feeling isolated, lonely, try and find a club or support group to hook up with. Perhaps an Autism Support group. And if you are living in accommodation that is causing you distress, try you best to get that improved too. as it will make your life circumstances much better.
I also recommend staying away from firearms, especially if you know you have a disposition to meltdowns etc.
Otherwise i wish you all well, hope you are all happy.
14 Oct 2015, 2:55 am
