The Verdict Filters In: Cho Was Autistic

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... id=topnews

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Warning signs about Seung Hui Cho came early in his life.

Cho was unusually quiet as a child, relatives said. He did not respond to greetings. He did not want to be hugged. But when Cho fought with his older sister, he would punch her with shocking violence.

Kim Yang Soon, a great-aunt in Korea, said Cho's mother told her the boy had autism. After the family immigrated to the United States in 1992, when Cho was 8, Kim would call his mother and ask how the boy was doing. "She only talked about her daughter," Kim said. "We knew something was wrong."

Because Cho did well in school, his mother did not seem very determined to get treatment for him, Kim added

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Yes, I was watching the Today Show on NBC and a member of the panel Lester Holt was interviewing mentioned that. They were discussing the stigma surrounding mental illness and seeking psychiatric treatment in the Korean-American community. Of course, I don't consider autism a mental illness, but I imagine that stigma, combined with his family's lack of resources to seek any sort of treament or support was a huge stumbling block for him.

I have to say that the more I've learned about him, the more it sounded like he had Asperger's. But, I think it is so important for people to realize that he had many other issues, as well, and had lost complete touch with reality. I really have a pit in my stomach thinking about the reaction people will have if the media latches on to this. It could lead to discussion about the lack of availability of resources and support for families with autistic children in the US, but I imagine it would just make the stigma that comes with being autistic worse and add fuel to the pro-cure movement.

Frankly, I think you are both trolls, but....

The idea that a person was told by another that someone was something will NOT hold up in a court of law. It is called heresay! The fact is that she did NOT say he was autistic but supposedly said she feared he might be.

As for AS? The jury is even out if he was autistic.

Steve

anybody can snap, whether AS or borderline ot whatever

Seriously, this misinformation have to stop! It not his autism that was a masacre.

He have Schizophrenia (if I spell that correctly) which was a misdiagnosed of autism. There were another disorder which can explain the "antisocial" behavior. If you put it together, you actually formed a imitatation of autism. See where am I going with this?

Steve: calm yourself. The incident is a week old, I said the news is 'filtering in', and I'm not quite sure what to make of an aggressive forum-poster calling two people with a combined total of 28 posts - trolls.

Take a pill. Or two. Or as many as you like.

So far there is no proof there was a diagnosis, but I'm sure that even if there was, the family would have chosen to cover it up if possible (since he did well in school) and not seek services. There is still a huge stigma for parents about autism. They want normal kids and will pretend they have one if necessary. My parents were like this, mostly my mother. I was very smart (at least compared to the other kids in my class, lol) and did well in school. I now know that some teachers told her they were concerned about me behaviorally and socially. Her solution was to have my IQ tested. When told it was high, that was enough for her. She could sit back in her smugness and pretend there was no problem.

Frankly, I would have done the same as your parents. NOT out of shame, but out of concern and to give you the best opportunity. Their reaction might have been FAR worse if they had thought about incidents like CHOs, and thought that he was autistic. It was nice that they just had you tested and basically thought "OH, SHE'S DOING FINE! Her teachers are NUTS! LOL!"

As for the others talking about "verdicts". I AM calm. What made you think I'm not? And MOST trolls "have few posts". WHY???? Because they eventually get caught and are banned, or they give up, or trade off, etc.... You can be pretty sure *I* am not a troll. I have been here so long and most of what I said was supportive.

People won't think autism if they just meet me, and most that even KNOW me apparently don't suspect. Still, I want it to have the best reputation it can have.

Steve

I would think that a bunch of Aspies could have a logical discussion about this. Whether anyone wants him to be autistic (or even if he was misdiagnised) the FACT is this is being reported by several newpapers so the general public will be thinking it. They know little about autism - most think it is strictly a mental illness and it is in the DSM. So what should we do about this reporting since it could be that the family in Korea is not making this up and somewhere there is medical report in the US to back that up.

I also don't think it could be schizophrenia unless it was co-occuring because he seemed to be like this from birth. Schizophrenia - even at the youngest - is around 6 years old. The grandfather said the boy gave his mother trouble since birth. There is no reason also why a person on the autism spectrum could not also have a co-occuring serious mental illness or develop one after years of mistreatment. And whether he was autistic or had AS - either way that would be on the spectrum. It would effect everyone on the spectrum - consider how many schools who already balk about mainstreaming or inclusion. And if this does turn out to be true then the issue of stigma should be discussed.

Maybe Cho's parents had autistic traits too. Some more information about his family in this article.


Mirror.co.uk news

I am worried that inferior reasoning will prevail in the popular media.

I think it is possible that Cho had AS.

I also think sociopathy and AS are getting confused far too frequently by a society in which it is politically incorrect to call someone a sociopath, even though it IS a distinct clinical condition. And I think it's possible to be BOTH and that AS is not the operative issue.

My real concern is that popular media tends to draw bad and prejudicial conclusions.

I have a close friend and roommate who was murdered two months ago. He was one of the kindest, most intelligent and most understanding people I've ever known. I consider him a credit to the human race.

He was in a relationship with a woman who had been married for eight months and separated for four. This woman had very solid grounds for divorce. Her husband was engaged in some disturbing activity. The divorce was only being tied up by the length of the process.

The husband shot and killed them both one night at her house.

Naturally, much of the press coverage cited the story as a "typical" case of a jealous husband walking in on a wife and lover and shooting them both.

To come to that conclusion, they had to ignore the fact that the man did not live with his wife or that they had been separated for half of their marriage. They had to ignore that the "husband" was engaged to another woman. They had to ignore that the woman considered my roommate her legitimate partner (they were discussing moving and, I believe, marriage) and was only delayed by divorce proceedings divvying up property and that she had publicly rejected reconciliation with her husband on multiple occasions and called the police on him before.

It wasn't simply that a husband walked in and found his wife with "another man" as the press chose to call it.

It was a man who had been excised from a woman's life. A man who was a pedatrist. Who threatened her animals. Who was engaged to another woman. A man who stood to lose everything in a divorce. Who may have had surveillance on his estranged wife whom he had not seen in months outside of public rejections. Who was living with his parents at age 36 after being unemployed for months. Who put a gun in his car and drove up to his wife's house, putting two bullets in her while she was asleep. Who shot my friend six times as he was trying to get away.

It's not typical. But it's easier to report it as a stereotype, a cliche, because the average idiot can't be bothered to understand nuances of a situation. They want a clear and concise reason for everything that happens so they don't have to think about it.

So it's easier to toss a diagnosis at Cho, separate him from the mainstream of society and scapegoat a condition for his behavior.

It's harder to consider that perhaps this guy wasn't equipped to deal with the hand life had dealt him or that perhaps his expectations for other people were inconsistent with his abilities. It's harder to consider that perhaps society needs to change. It's harder to consider that perhaps the average person is capable of mass murder under certain circumstances and it's the people like us with conditions like AS who are less likely to.

It's also harder to consider that there are no easy answers or explanations, that we have no way of getting an accurate profile on someone who killed himself and, possibly, that some people are just miserable screwups without any deeper explanation than that.

PatrickG, that was a great post. Many truths to ponder.

It said in the newspaper yesterday that he was diagnosed with autism aged eight,and was NV when younger.

Am think he could have been focusing so much on the people who were bad to him that it took over his everyday living and thoughts,this strong obsessing? with thoughts are be part of ASD for many,but it can get out of control and become a reality-especially if that is mostly what person does,people were bad to him,looks like no one sorted those problems out but they made him see a pysch. person when he started stalking girls,he seems to have had no help with what he feels.

Steve, my mom did this purely to save face. She was a teacher and then principal in the same school district. Just the fact that teachers brought my problems to her attention could have turned political on either side. Her choice was to save face both personally and for her career to pretend nothing was wrong. Meanwhile I was left to the sharks in a school where I was being viciously bullied. Finally after 2 years of jr. high she relented and put me in private school. It wasn't great but at least I wasn't viciously bullied anymore (not to my face, anyway). I should have gotten some kind of protection or just have been pulled out and homeschooled, but that would have made her look bad.

Sadly a few years after I left that district the son of another principal killed himself. I wonder if the same pattern happened to him-- his poblems were ignored for the sake of saving face and protecting his dad's career.

It also sounds like he had a speech disorder because everyone agrees his voice was odd and he hated to speak. That could easily account for many of his problems, especially as it wasn't treated and people kept trying to force him to speak. I doubt he was Sociopathic, only because Sociopaths tend to be very charismatic and well liked on the surface. That was not Cho by a long shot. I wouldn't put too much credence into an Autistic diagnosis until we know more. People say many things to the news when these things happen and many are found to be simply not true, but just people trying to get attention.

What is apparent is that this young man had many issues that were not addressed, even when some tried to get him help. That is the real tragedy. Whether it was his parent's culture, bullies, inability of the police to be able to do anything with complaints or failure of clinicians or combinations of all of these, it was ineffective and resulted in tragedy. That is what we know.

I'm sure lots of organizations who thrive on negativism are going to be all over this. We just have to reiterate that many things led to this and no one will ever be sure that anything could have stopped it. None of us will ever know the full story because he is now gone.

Well, the capital letters and multiple question marks you've used tend to suggest a certain degree of emotion is attached to your opinion, as does this:


I've noticed in my time on these boards that when certain things are being discussed, parents tend to start behaving rather strangely. Do your kids have AS?

Anyway, I've been dipping in and out of the discussions relating to this incident, and although I concede there's no proof, it does seem possible that he had AS. Looking at it another way, I haven't read anything to suggest that he didn't have AS. That might not sit too well with some people, but I personally don't believe in hiding things away just because it offends the delicate sensibilities of certain individuals.

If you've spent anytime reading about the problems many individuals with AS face socially (that's the diagnosed ones); if you've read the many accounts of hatred expressed regarding "neurotypicals"; if you've read of the fixation certain individuals on these boards have with firearms, from a country where firearms are readily available; if you've spent 30+ years in a society where ostensibly everyone is free and equal, yet below the facade the most inequitable regime of prejudice exists that isolates and punishes those who don't fit-in; then I reckon you shouldn't be too surprised if, every now and then, a member of that disenfranchised social underclass goes on a shooting spree. That's not to condone such actions. That's just an explanation as to why they may be likely to occur.

Also, I'll comment that PatrickG has added some interesting thoughts:



I'd go along with that to an extent. I disagree with the last bit, though. I think that, all other things being equal, people with AS are just as likely, or unlikely, to go about mass murder as anyone else. But, of course, all other things aren't equal. Many, if not most, people with AS face having a lifetime of relative social exclusion forced upon them. Psychologically, I think that's very damaging, and must add to the risk of them acting like that Cho character.