28% of murderers thought to have suffered from ASD

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21 May 2014, 11:54 pm

btbnnyr wrote:

Verdandi wrote:

Here is the actual study:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 8914000305

Note that they do not actually directly examine and diagnose these people with autism. They identify possible traits that could be considered autistic, and a large number of these "diagnoses" (they're not diagnoses) are post-mortem.

Existing research does not support a link between autism and violent crime.

Why is the bar for ASD "diagnosis" so slow when someone is a murderer?

I think this has to do with people seeking easy explanations that absolve them of finding real causes and real solutions.

Shadi2
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22 May 2014, 12:08 am

dianthus wrote:

Shadi2 wrote:

His dad said that he always thought there was something else about him (other than AS). Personally I think that there is no way in the world Adam Lanza had only Aspergers, the guy was at least also a sociopath.

Yeah. There had to be something else going on with him. It's a shame that the media tries to associate it with AS though.

I agree with you. As if there wasn't enough misconceptions about AS to begin with, they have to add more with this kind of statements about a murderer, and stupid studies like this. I'm actually really angry about this, but like I said in my other post, even if it was true (which I don't think it is), and eventho most people who are uninformed will probably think that AS makes you more "dangerous", at the same time it means that 72% didn't have AS so it is unintentionally favorable to us hehe.

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CyclopsSummers
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22 May 2014, 12:20 am

Callista wrote:

The only thing this study proves is that people love to pretend that murderers are insane, and love to label them with every diagnosis under the sun, including autism.

If they had limited it to pre-existing autism diagnosis, there would be no increased rate.

As it is, the only thing they can prove is, "When someone kills people, other people (especially journalists and defense laywers) like to say that the killer is autistic." Yeah, that's true; people do that. It has no basis in truth, but they do it.

It's really bad science to imply that there's an autism/murder connection just because murderers get labeled autistic. It's as bad as making up statistics.

Here's a statistic that isn't made up: Autistic people are still several times more likely to be murder victims than non-autistic people. Even among disabled people, autistic people are unusually vulnerable. According to at least one study I've read, the majority of disabled children killed by their parents are autistic. (Even if that study had an unusually high number by chance, it would still have to be close to half. Autistic kids make wonderful punching bags for the sociopathic parents of the world, apparently.)

This means we need to protect each other, especially the little ones. It means we need to have the guts to speak up when things aren't right. And this isn't right. It's bad science, and it's going to hurt people.

People are scared of the changes they are perceiving in modern society as a whole (and perhaps Western society in particular) with regard to individualisation and the implementation of the internet and social media. They are trying to find a new social balance, and are placing more emphasis on the importance of social control and promoting people skills and teamwork as desireable traits. As a result, they are going to cherry-pick those traits of the human psychology that they find desireable and undesireable respectively. Consequently, a pathologization of the undesireable traits could be applied. In other words, at any given time in a society, a 'disordered' individual is not necessarily defined by absolute quantifiable neurological/mental disadvantages, as much as they are defined by a disadvantage that is specific to the whims and expectations of said society. When you label certain character traits as 'pathological', you have an excellent tool for ostracizing individuals who display behaviour that is undesireable to TPTB.

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CyclopsSummers
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22 May 2014, 12:25 am

Shadi2 wrote:

No. Because on the population as a whole, it is estimated that slightly under 1% are on the autistic spectrum to begin with. So a 28% representation among murderers is still a bad figure for autistics.

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Shadi2
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22 May 2014, 12:48 am

CyclopsSummers wrote:

Shadi2 wrote:

Yes you are right (numbers wise), but don't they mention "thought to have ASD"? rather than "diagnosed with ASD"? Because there is also a whole lot of people who have many traits of AS but have not been diagnosed (surely more than 1% of the population), and since no one is 100% AS nor 100% NT, how would they know which "side" of them pushed them to murder? (not sure I am explaining it correctly but hopefully you understand what I mean). Either way tho, this so-called study is upsetting, there is enough misconceptions about AS already, and they just added to it.

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opal
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22 May 2014, 1:00 am

Martin Bryant had a lot more going on than autism. He had a low IQ , was constantly bullied, tortured animals (sociopath?) and showed signs of mental illness. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Bryant

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22 May 2014, 2:13 am

I posted a short (and polite) comment on the Daily Mail, I don't know if it will show but anyway I had to say something.

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Dillogic
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22 May 2014, 3:05 am

It seems like you have to watch out for the 72% of other people more.

It's easy to twist facts.

wblastyn
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22 May 2014, 4:42 am

Well there's probably a mediating factor, like bullying, that sets them off. ASD people are more likely to get bullied and suffer stress.

Correlation is not causation and all that.

I don't think the study means very much tbh, especially with the postmortem diagnoses.

Based on my own experience, I've often fanatazied about my bullies dying horribly in some tragic accident, but not as a result of anything I did. I know I could never do anything like that, I couldn't live with the guilt.

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22 May 2014, 6:21 am

Aspinator wrote:

Pieces like this are what gives Aspies a bad name. It seems that the cause of anything negative can be traced to autism. This is just another example of how society demonizes Aspies. There are very few stories of Aspies/HFAs who are successful and have improved society.

it wasnt just about aspergers,it was about the autism spectrum in general.

Quote:

his behavior and higher functioning/mental capacity is not typical of those of us who have always been diagnosed with intelectual disability,he had had a brain injury and mental illness-both had probably caused the lack of IQ as opposed to him being truly intelectualy disabled,he woud have been recognised as such as a young child if he was ID-it shows in our global development, even in the mildest cases.

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22 May 2014, 6:53 am

I believe it. BUT I don't believe it's directly due to the ASD. I believe it's due to the bullying and abuse endured because the person was "different". I have NO doubt that "back in the day" children with undiagnosed autism were simply viewed as "bad" or "naughty" and "insubordinate" and may have been treated pretty poorly by their parents. My father for example, now that I know my child has it and I have it... it's obvious he does to. He was horribly abused and unwanted by his parents. They would punish him harshly for things he still doesn't "get", they locked him out of the house for days at a time etc... but they treated his brother and sister just fine. I mean, I'd imgine a life like that (I'm leaving a lot out, it was prettybad) could push someone to become a criminal. He didn't. Well. Not a murderer.

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22 May 2014, 7:01 am

Forbes has a rebuttal to this study:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillin ... -autistic/

Quote:

According to mental health professionals who personally diagnosed serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, he had a personality disorder. That didn?t stop the authors of a recent paper attempting to link autism and mass murderers, serial killers, and other homicidal maniacs from listing Dahmer as ?highly suspected? of having an autism spectrum disorder, along with a 61 other people who were never diagnosed with one, including Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, and Dylan Klebold.

I?ve seen some recklessness in my wanderings through the world of autism science, but these authors reach depths I cannot fathom. If you doubt that, let me just point out that they use the Daily Mail as one of their citations to demonstrate that a killer not diagnosed with autism might have it and cite an author who very much wants to make up a diagnostic category called ?Criminal Autistic Psychopathy? as a subset of Asperger?s. Which no longer exists.

In their paper, which is making a splash, of course, Clare Allely and co-authors claim that 67 of the 239 ?eligible killers? they evaluated in their review had ?definite, highly probable, or possible? autism spectrum disorder. But a closer look at their numbers shows that of these, only six were in the ?definite? category. That?s 2.5% of the total of 239 they examined. It?s a percentage that happens to be just slightly less than the 2.6% identified in the most thorough study of autism prevalence in the general population to date, in South Korea.

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22 May 2014, 7:03 am

CWA wrote:

This is a cultural fable, the idea that abuse victims go on to be abusers, that bullied people snap and start killing. They're narratives, they're not real life. They're stories people tell to rationalize why someone would do something so horrible as to go on a killing spree through a school.

And the study doesn't even really say what the articles claim it says, per the Forbes article I just linked.

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22 May 2014, 7:46 am

KingdomOfRats wrote:

Aspinator wrote:

it wasnt just about aspergers,it was about the autism spectrum in general.

Quote:

The head injury was in 1992. He had been tested as low IQ and behavioural problems as early as 1973, soon after starting school. He qualified for a disabled pension after. leaving school in 1984 because of this.

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22 May 2014, 7:49 am

Great! Even more false assumptions to be thrown at us! Eh, YM, are you sure you're not a serial killer?

Awesome

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VisInsita
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22 May 2014, 8:00 am

The problem here isn?t solely just the fact that this article will lead to prejudices and discrimination, but that the actual study in itself is severely screwed. Btbnnyr pointed out the most crucial question here and I am personally ashamed that the journalists of today can?t think and pose such questions anymore.

First of all about the study: In it the starting point wasn?t the diagnosis of autism but murder. True statistical information could have been found by studying how many of those with a diagnosed autism spectrum disorder committed murder during their life time. Very few actually, as studies have shown, and many of those who did, were severely autistic persons killing their parent unintentionally. In studies conducted in this manner the results have shown that the autistic population is actually more likely to be a victim of crime than its perpetrator.

So the studies that are based on pre-crime diagnoses show a decreased level of crime, but the studies where the researchers themselves made post crime diagnoses on a population that was already confined concerning the other variable (murder in this case), show a remarkably high rates of crimes. So how come these two statistics don?t match? If the autistic population has such a high risk of committing murder, why only those who get a post crime diagnosis from the researchers after being already included in the murder group perpetrate those crimes?

No matter how you TRY to make your study reliable and valid in this sort of setting you just can?t make it. I can?t personally understand how someone?s scientific pride allows them to conduct as crucially screwed studies as this. Already the personal accounts these post crime diagnoses are based on, are screwed in the sense that after a label (e.g. murderer) is attached to a person, people also start to attach in their mind cognate attributes to that person ? probably to explain the act "away".

Then secondly about the level of journalism: What do you guys think, could it have been possible to say in an article that [add an ethnicity here] are more likely to be [add a negative feature here] after we labeled them post mortem with these negative features. Wouldn?t that be seen as racist?

Last edited by VisInsita on 22 May 2014, 1:31 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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