Difficulty connecting with psychiatrist?

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Hey. I have a friend with Asperger's who also has other problems--could be anything from depression to bipolar disorder, I won't make an armchair diagnosis. We've only ever communicated online and he lives across the globe. He's an intelligent and sensitive young man, but also gets trapped into dark moods and spirals of negative thoughts that he has difficulty getting out of, a tendency that having Asperger's may have made worse.

This guy is starting to scare me with what he's saying in his messages. He talks about killing people and was once very specific about wanting to kill an internet personality. I don't think he'll act on it (heck, the woman he once threatened isn't on the same continent) and that he's letting out his frustrations and rage. On the other hand, others have ignored this kind of talk before to their regret.

I know he has a psychiatrist, and I'm concerned if he's receiving the best care. If he feels compelled to pour his heart out to someone he barely knows on the internet, could it be he's holding back in his therapy sessions? Could Asperger's be affecting his ability to connect with his psychiatrist? Maybe he should try a new psychiatrist or therapy method, but I'm not sure what advice I can give there. I feel helpless, talking to this troubled young man all this time yet not knowing enough to help him.

From an AS standpoint - if he has any solid ideological basis for these crazy impulses, he's most likely just exercising his capacity for moral reasoning, which more than likely, for reasons we aren't willing to speculate must have been ill used, or potentially taken advantage of. What little therapy I've had concluded that I was more or less fine. Yes, I can live within the boundaries of that definition, but normality takes its' toll on some less-than-choice aspects of my life.

I'm mostly AS (yes, diagnosed), so I can say this: Next time he starts talking that way, tell him you'll fly over there and smack it out of him if he acts on it*. The psychological rationale for killing anyone does NOT lie in the theory of the individual mind.

edit: *Crass language warranted. Killing people is not okay, and I'm not convinced anyone legitimately part of the Autism spectrum has it in them. A lot of lines crossed prior to doing anything of that nature verge on separate conditions altogether.

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