Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion National Dialogue Hurting Or Helping?

As news stories started to pour out about the horrific tragedy in Connecticut, I began to notice the phrases reporters chose to use when describing the shooter: "afflicted with Aspergers"' "always was weird and wouldn't make eye contact", "was a loner who was obviously brilliant but kept to himself", etc.. I've also attached a link to an essay that is getting attention from a mother of a child with violent tendencies. While the essay points out some very real national problems with treating mental illness, the writer lumps ADHD, Autism, and several other disorders together under the umbrella of mental illness. You can read the essay here: http://thebluereview.org/i-am-adam-lanzas-mother/

As a mother of children with learning disorders and one with several of the traits of Aspergers, I am worried that the new national dialogue is painting a very broad brush by lumping all of these into one pot and leading to the misguided notion that maybe all people with these disorders are capable of such atrocities and are, therefore to be feared. And I'm worried that because of it, the next time my son doesn't read a social cue correctly in a classroom, that the teacher's, administration's, and school security's reactions will be escalated far out of proportion due to the spread of disinformation. I don't know how to change the course the national dialogue is taking and think there is actually very little I can do, but I am worried that my job advocating for my children just got a lot harder,

Some people want to make sense of such an atrocity and believe that it could have been predicted and therefore in the future, prevented. The NYT article says his classmates "weren't surprised", but the vast majority of people who do not connect with their high school or town do not do such things.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/n...-is-now-identified-as-a-mass-killer.html
A Gunman, Recalled as Intelligent and Shy, Who Left Few Footprints in Life
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
New York Times
December 14, 2012

Still, after hearing of the news on Friday, Ms. DeVivo reconnected with friends from Newtown, and the consensus was stark. “They weren’t surprised,” she said. “They said he always seemed like he was someone who was capable of that because he just didn’t really connect with our high school, and didn’t really connect with our town.”

One of the stories I saw mentioned "Asperger's" but also said this kid was not physically capable of feeling pain--not a symptom typically associated with Asperger's. So clearly there was more going on with him, unfortunately. Perhaps that is a good thing to emphasize when discussing this with others.

This is just one level up from the guy who bullied me in elementary school and killed his parents and killed himself at about the same age as this shooter.

Although that kid (my bully) was not well off, financially.

This guy's father should have dealt with this problem. He was making plenty of money at GE and should have at least have some idea of what was going on.

He obviously hated his mother. He shot her in the face.

I have the same concerns as Lisa, that a sort of witch-hunt may ensue in the panic of people trying to make sense of why the shooting occured. At least in the short term, it could very well could make advocating alot harder and any quirky kid who doesn't mesh as well as the narrow-minded adults think they should will get swept into it and possibly targeted.

It's going to be very tense in most schools this week, kids will pick up on their parents' fears and teachers' fears.

The problem with the internet news is that it magnifies an issue and all the many, many more stories about other kids who didn't fit in and turned out fine are drowned out. Maybe the media and comments should be bombarded by stories from those people.

ABQ: I share your concern.

Useful links on this:
http://www.emilywillinghamphd.com/2012/12/autism-empathy-and-violence-one-of.html

http://paulacdurbinwestbyautisticbl...ism-aurora-shooter-and-actual-crime.html

DeeDee

This is not about Aspergers. Its about unchecked rage and a lack of self control. Being an Aspie does not mean a lack of empathy, just an inability to know what others are feeling.

Here is a link about a child that is out of control. Its one thing to have a little lawyer, its another to have a little Genghis Khan. Most of us have the loving lawyer, not the nascent violent killer, the jekyll and hyde.

And this mom knew enough to seek help.

http://anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.com/2012/12/thinking-unthinkable.html

Another here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/m...ld-a-psychopath.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0


My Uncle worked with kids and adults like this. He made it his mission to get them locked up anyway he could - to protect them, their families, and the public.

I'm with Austin on this one.

Agreed. The much larger (societal) tragedy is that it is SO HARD to get help for a person who very clearly NEEDS that help.

It just should not be so hard to get help for a psychotic family member... but it all too often is.

I also hope that the mental illness here doesn't get lost in the details of radical acceleration and ASD, which I think we can all agree are not really the relevant information in the first place.

Bostonian - this was specifically one of the articles which raised concern - thanks for posting the link.

DeeDee and Austin - thanks for the links. Very good reading.

JonLaw - what an awful experience. I cannot imagine the trauma.

Dbat, Bzylzy, master of none - thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. It has been something that I've kept to myself because of worrying that I was going to somehow come off calloused about the real pain and sorrow, which is so not the case.

HowlerKarma - indeed.

Trauma? He only bothered me for a little while. I don't think I offered him the appropriate level of bully satisfaction.

I had forgotten he existed until my neighbor growing up told me that he had finally snapped and took out his parents and then himself.

And now that I look it up, he attempted to kill four people, but only ended up killing his mother, he merely severely wounded his brother, his sister, his father, and his sister's boyfriend. His weapon was a knife. He did use a gun to kill himself, though.

He was under house arrest at the time.

And here's a gem from the paper: "I remember when he was 8 or 10 years old, he was very nasty to most people".

Yes, that's true. He was quite nasty.

How are you going to stop crazy? You can't even make regular people "act right". It's just sad. I cried less today, but I still cried and it's three days later. I've been a fountain, soaked my pillow, my husband had to ask me if I was ok to drive at one point because the tears have ran for days.

What's the dialog?

i've seen guns, religion, and politics,
Is it a national discussion when people use every news event to say their own point again?

It's frightening to parents that this is a parenting fail that make everyone feel insecure (above the safety insecurity emotions). I think someone had a quote on their wall that said, "I am fully human so anything that any human has experienced cannot be fully alien to me." Everything this guy was, every choice his parents made, some of them match your family and your neighbors.

Maybe a talk about people slipping through the cracks. What else could have been done? It seems like they tried to do quite a bit. I cried less tears today than the first two days, I was like a fountain.

The dialogue I am referring to is this: that this was somehow caused by autism, and that autism is being described as a mental illness that can lead to this kind of horrific behavior. Yes, the pro- and anti- nuts choose every tragedy to create a soapbox for their agenda, by my concern is what this new dialogue about autism is going to do.to our children who, even when not diagnosed on the autism spectrum, have some of the traits due to their high IQ.

I admit, I found my heart sinking when I read that the killer had an ASD and was extremely bright. Both because of how this will affect other people with ASds and their families, and because it frightened and freaked me out on a gut level. DD doesn't have an ASD diagnosis, but we haven't ruled it out. She is extremely compassionate towards animals and very altruistic in her general thinking, but I am sometimes alarmed by her ability to become cold and nasty when stymied, and recently by a new tendency towards frequent lying (which she is quite good at due to being very quick on her feet and a good actor). She lies about things that don't matter. She also blames her problems on others--it's very hard for her to admit fault.

Has anyone else had the thought the young man is being describe as highly intelligent along with obvious issues of social adjustment. PLEASE understand I'm throwing this idea out based on a few things I've read in the news about his past and a small and intuitive reaction I had this morning while contemplating why on earth would someone intentionally target an elementary school in rage (or carefully calculated violence). It is just a thought.

This year, I watch my own 6 year escalate his cries for challenge and help. He at one point even seemed angry that his 1st grade teacher didn't understand him. He even said a few times that he thought he would be better off dead- school was that frustrating and as he saw it, it would always be frustrating. It took time to get testing and work with the schools and psychologists to respond to his needs. Things aren't 100% perfect- but a move up to 2nd has helped him feel better and more challenged.

I WISH I knew from experience the level of inner struggle some of these highly gifted feel. In our own family's experience, trying to communicate these intense feelings at such a young age was heartbreaking and painful- he would even say sometimes that talking about would make him cry and that's why he had a hard time telling his teacher his needs.

I'm not a psychologist- but a brilliant mind, marginalized and misunderstood for a long time, combined with anger and mental illness- could that cause a person with deep rooted anger and frustration lash out against their memories of where that disturbance began?

I hope that when the mourning ends and healing begins, our nation takes a close look at violence in our media (especially in games that some parents give their children permission to play), mental healthcare reform, gun control AND our knowledge and understanding of gifted education.

Ohhh... me too. My stomach is still in knots about it.

The first sight of the word "gifted" in connection with AL sent me scouring the internet looking for as much info about him as I could find, trying to pin point what makes him different from all the other ASD/HFA/AS/2e people out there who are NOT MENTALLY ILL.

How do we undo the public perception damage this has done to those with Aspergers?



Me too, and same here. I'm ok with this now, though, because I've spent the last 2 days reading every scrap of text I could find about AL and I've come to the conclusion that he's very, VERY different from my two kids.

I am worried this may keep some parents from searching for help for their children (be it Asperger's or anything else) because they will be worried their children will be labeled and everyone will be scared of them. ... Do I really want to got through all the possible Autism evaluations we have ahead of us for DS2.8 when in the end others around us may think he (just like his brother) is some sort of 'freak' that can at any point snap and kill everyone around? That's so NOT like my kids!

so, yes, what the media is doing here is scaring the heck out of me!

I'm very glad ABQMom started this post - thanks!

Like ultramarina, my heart just sank when I first read "socially awkward" and all that, and that his mom "tried homeschooling for a while", and that people "didn't really know her" etc. How heart-wrenching. My DD is so gregarious, friendly, has many successes outside of school, does get mad at home but mostly snarly/arguing things. It runs in the family - some ethnicities are more "reactive" than others!! Nothing out of control though. She feels things very deeply. But at school is it different. She's so much more awkward and nervous. Is is the institutionalize environment? She's in a smaller private school now with a tougher curriculum but it doesn't fix everything, and socially quite frankly she doesn't really fit in that great. So so. We don't fit in as adults but the kids are from all over so it's not a big deal...to me. She has to learn something at school and she's doing that more now.

I'm not looking forward to this week after a couple of e-mails I got about their "concerns" (which offer no details). I am going to pay for private counseling now though for us both because of some of the things she's gone through that are obviously sticking to her and I'm out of ideas for how to talk to her/help her. I'm very optomistic about the woman I found, will start soon. Not looking forward to this week but looking forward to vacation so very, very much!! Anyway thanks guys I feel better reading everyone's posts.

My homeschooled son is very smart, occasionally wears all black clothing, plays video games and we have become more and more socially isolated as brace wearing and pain issues became more difficult to work around in musical theater so that he had to quit. He did not want to be involved with the one homeschool group in our area because they are not tolerant toward people who are different in any way. He had to quit scouts several years ago because of the physical issues that made hiking long distances and camping impossible.

When my son was about seven my sister insisted that he had to have Aspergers even though doctors said he didn't because he read so early and talked like a professor in addition to having a few sensory issues. If she met my husband's family she would probably think that most of them have Aspergers. My husband's sister is a geology professor and she talks like a professor. One of her kids is an engineer, the other pre-med. Another relative is married to a lawyer. They all use high level vocabulary.

But in our small town my son does not fit in and I feel like people are going to be looking at us even more than they did before. I don't think I will let him wear the black clothes for a while.

You can often tell who is kind of prone to wackadoo things.

This guy didn't just snap. He planned and went hunting for little kids.

If you listen to people, you can generally find out who is "off". I know of one individual in my area who is going to warrant further observation in the future.

And he's not the most socially awkward.

The problem is generally psychopathy/sociopathy, not autism.

Although, I talked to a teacher last night who watched an aggressive kid with autism get pepper sprayed.

So, there is some general association with autism and violence in the teacher community already. That's impulse control.

Killers with multiple weapons and a strategic plan for mass murder generally don't have a problem with impulse control.

Yes!! Exactly... which will make the problem worse, because diagnoses lead to help and support, which lead to reduction in impulsive, socially ostracizing behaviours that create misconceptions.

SIGH


YES. This. (x 1,000)

This has been making the internet rounds. I thought it might be relevant here.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...ntal-illness-conversation_n_2311009.html

Oh, look!

A future highly intelligent threat to humanity.

I think that people with "ODD" and "Intermittent Explosive Disorder" generally need to make a decision to engage in pro-social behavior.

They have to want to behave and deal with their emotions in a non-threatening, non-abusive manner.

This is different than psychopaths/sociopaths, however. They are just missing a certain internal regulation system entirely. I think they use the part of their mind that deals with "things" to deal with "people" and operate accordingly.

They can be trained and learn to avoid punishment, but they are never going to be normal, in the sense of being able to properly relate to people. Generally, this means no killing small animals, no killing people, no terroristic threats, etc.

His mother, who knew him better them anyone else, did not see it coming.

That's the scary part. But did she think to look for it? Do we ever? Was she blinded by love for her son? Aren't we all?

(On the other hand, what percentage of kids actually go the full distance that AL did?)

Mk13 - I don't know what the others will say but I wouldn't back off on appointments. That's the last thing your child needs and in the long run there is safety in numbers, so to speak.

oh, I won't ... I was thinking more in general. I personally don't give a "beep" about what others think about me or my kids.

You haven't spend enough time around juvenile delinquents and their families if you give full credibility to mothers without knowing any other details about the relationship and history of the guy.

One of the attorneys in my office tossed mommykins out when she was not getting the point that her kid was not the victim.

You get the feel for who you can do business with and who you can't. For instance, one mother calls the police on her son when he goes ODD. I like her and generally trust her reports because he's just being a violent jerk.

Do we know that? She can't speak to that now, and failing to prevent it from happening doesn't mean she didn't, at least to some extent, fear for her own safety or for what might happen... I think it's fair to guess that she didn't see the scope and scale of what has happened coming, but did she fear for her own safety? Who knows, maybe not, but maybe she was too scared to act in case she was unable to get help and found herself worse off...

I am nodding to everything JonLaw is saying...

I agree with JonLaw about being able to spot people who need to be monitored and/or helped.

I knew a guy who ended up killing himself and his child while the police were outside his house with his wife. This guy was wound up way, way, way more tightly than anyone else I've ever met. I don't mean that he was just a really intense person. I mean that many things in his life went to extremes: he was way too intense about work, about politics, about women--- lots of stuff. I don't think he was a psychopath. Not at all. But I do think he was mentally ill and not treated (or not treated properly).

All the tv commercials for antidepressants say, "side effects include increased risks of suicide or violent behavior and are not suitable for teens or young adults."

At first we were thinking (me and the hubs) that it was that legal fake synthetic designer drugs (bath salts, fake coke, fake pot). Now the guy lived with his mother who got $300,000 a month alimony in a million dollar house I think it was more likely a side effect of some prescription meds.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/16/adam-lanza-shot-himself-a_n_2311483.html
(in the comments)
http://planet.infowars.com/worldnew...nnecticut-connected-to-the-libor-scandal
His dad helped GE pay no takes on 14 billion dollars last year.
http://static.infowars.com/2012/12/i/general/peter_lanza_GE_capitol_father_of_shooter.jpg

I am not saying do not medicate. I would never say that. Everybody is on a path of their own. I have seen parents looking for solutions refer to the medication merry go round, looking for the right medication that really helps without the side effects.

My brain went here as well.

The police say they have found evidence of an apparent motive. I guess we'll see. TBH, I hope it's something like a thwarted love interest.

If true, this might explain why she never saw it coming.

"The mother of the loner who massacred 26 pupils and staff at a US primary school may have played a major part in his catastrophic mental breakdown, it emerged last night.

Friends and family portrayed Adam Lanza’s mother Nancy as a paranoid ‘survivalist’ who believed the world was on the verge of violent, economic collapse.

She is reported to have been struggling to hold herself together and had been stockpiling food, water and guns in the large home she shared with her 20-year-old son in Connecticut.

Mrs Lanza, 52, was a ‘prepper’ – so called because they are preparing for a breakdown in civilised society – who apparently became obsessed with guns and taught Adam and his older brother, Ryan, how to shoot, even taking them to local ranges."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ds-say-believed-world-edge-collapse.html

That's an awful lot of stress for a 20 year old kid with issues. I wonder if his actions were out of mercy - to spare his mom and those children from the end of the world? It's a long shot theory, but who knows.

I've been trying to look up if he went to Community College at 16. Google says ABC news says it. I've read it in a few comments sections. Here's how wiki worded it:

Yeah, maybe "advocating" over specific wording in "plans" might get a little tougher if people keep putting those words in quotation marks.

eta: not going to look it up tonight to see if it's true.
It was from ABC news' link on google. I was just going to say, if he was "very, very smart" like they say and he did go to community school at 16 then I'd bet that was the least worst option in the end, not the plan.

I wonder whether I'm the only person here who, let's say, does some of what preppers do? It wouldn't surprise me if I'm not, as I think it can go with seeing what others don't, anxiety, overthinking, depending on your pov. (In practical terms what it means to us is that we don't run out of nonperishable food - I have stocks and a well-established system for using the oldest first - which actually, now that the system is running, is a big enough convenience to justify keeping it going anyway.)

Hmmm. I tend to over-order our bottled water - at any given time we have about 5-6 18.5 L jugs in the house. For me it's a) earthquake risk, or b) the occasional boil-water advisories we've gotten in the past (although they've always been too short lived to necessitate using up the water stores).

I'm not really a doomsday person though. I don't really fear catastrophes or violence (maybe because of where I live - which is ridiculous because we're in an earthquake zone - the coast of BC - but nothing ever seems to really happen up here).

Knock on wood.

My husband wanted to buy a gun, which I vehemently objected to. NOT going to happen. I'll never live under the same roof as a gun. NEVER. (It's different here though... no one else has them either.) The fact that the CT shooter used a weapon owned by a parent added clout to my argument.

Our problem is hurricanes, which knock out systems periodically.

Generally, the solution is to buy gasoline early, get into the car, and leave the path of the hurricane.

So you could stock up on gas, then. If we get our "big one" (earth quake that actually does something), our roads might be useless, but our stored water would be golden (assuming the bottles don't burst!! lol sigh).

Isn't it interesting how where we live determines which measures we take

I've only seen one episode of the show about these guys, and I'd say that any sensible family may be doing some of the things they're doing. For example, I keep a well-stocked pantry all summer, and about ten gallons of drinking water on hand... with an eye to my swimming pool as a backup source of fresh water, in a pinch. But I live in a hurricane zone, so I'm planning for a rational threat. Before that, I lived in an earthquake zone, and a lot of the advice public officials were giving on emergency preparation was the same.

I saw the preppers' show once, and from that limited sample size, I'd say those people are not rational:

One guy was upgrading his bunker in the mountains of Washington to survive a nuclear exchange with Russia. He lives in Nashville. Apart from the odds of a nuclear exchange, what are the odds that, should one occur, he can make it to remote Washington in time?

One guy was preparing his family to escape from a quarantine zone in case of a smallpox epidemic, which he described as a perfect biological weapon for a terrorist, since people haven't been exposed, and there is no vaccine. Good luck getting it in the hands of terrorists, though, because the last reported case was in the 1970s, and the only remaining samples are in high-security storage in the US and Russia. This would explain why people have no exposure, and why there isn't a widely-available vaccine.

Whether or not their preparations are being done well, the thinking that launched them into preparations in the first place is horribly flawed.

We're moderately prepped for hurricanes since we live in an area that gets them. We joke about the zombie apocalypse, etc., but I would never actually prep for anything severe/nonweather-related unless I had some indication of a very serious situation developing. It would take...I don't know what, but intimations of extremely dangerous mass chaos...for me to ever agree to having a gun in the home. The stats on that are virtually inarguable for me. (Owning a gun substantially ups your risk of someone in your home being harmed by one.)

I just couldn't agree with this more. I listen to the news and don't blame his Aspberger's to the crime. I feel like some people are just socio/psycho paths (or otherwise I would classify as evil). It exists.

Like JonLaw, I know of one child like this at my daughter's school. He may have some other LD tied into his peculiar behavior, but this child has bad vibes radiating off of him.

To the point where I have told my daughter to avoid him at all cost and if he ever does anything to her (assaults her physically or verbally) to get as far away from him as she can and not fight back.

If I read a story about this child in 15 more years, I would not be one bit surprised.

I hope that society won't label kids with LD, their struggles are hard enough without having to break down more walls to get the help that they need or the acceptance for who they are.

Please know that some of us see this situation for what it was, a gravely evil act.

Not sure what you mean here. "Evil" implies a simplicity that I doubt exists in this situation. I suspect that there was a complex combination of factors driving the shooter, including mental illness, guns at his fingertips, stress, and a lot of things that we may never know about, unless someone finds a suicide note or a diary or some kind of record kept by this guy.

IMO, the best way to reduce these kinds of incidents is to understand them thoroughly. You can't address the causes of something if you don't know precisely what they are. There are probably factors in common, and I will hypothesize that effective treatment of mental illness and sensible gun and ammunition control will help.

For a thorough examination of one school shooting, I recommend Columbine by Dave Cullen.

I reworded my earlier post a little bit mor coherently.
I'm of the opinion that the kindergarten killer (i cried fountains for days) might have been partially the result of a bad reaction to anti-depressants. (maybe the movie theater killer too) they were both male in their early 20s. The commercials on tv selling anti- depressants say, "may worsen suidicidal thoughts or actions in teens or young adults, consult your doctor immediately if your condition worsens". At first I thought it would be the bath salts (fake synthetic coke and pot that's sold legally in stores). Then I saw that he's super rich, his parents divorced, and he had mental issues, I'm thinking it was the side effect they advertise in the anti-depressant commercials for that age group.

And then I made a disclaimer not to make that fallacy where you take what I said and apply it to the extreme and think that I mean children shouldn't have medication or counseling if they need it. I just think it was a known and advertised side effect for that age group and side effects happen sometimes.

And my opinion is that it is jumping to conclusions. The side effects of anti-depressants are for suicide, not mass murder.

And while I have no personal experience with the stuff a friend with a long history of depression (up to being committed against her will while suicidal) once stated that the problem with anti-depressant was that they would lift her out of her deep funk just enough to give her the energy to walk to the kitchen and open the knife drawer. Suicidal thoughts were there aplenty before, medication would let her do something about it (hence the hospital, and starting the anti-depressants under medical supervision until she was past the "I am unworthy of living" phase).

Anecdotal case study of one, of course.

Re. JonLaw's reaction this floated around here a while back: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/magazine/can-you-call-a-9-year-old-a-psychopath.html

The truly heart wrenching part of the article for me was the father, the fact that he was the same as a child, and the hope that somehow their kid would also snap out of it eventually.

Although it seems to relate more to the "I am Adam Lanza's mother" article than to anything that has been reported about Lanza himself.

I wouldn't say "jumping to conclusions." We don't have much information to confirm or deny, but it's a reasonable hypothesis.

You can't just draw an arbitrary line between suicide and mass murder, because obviously suicide was a big component of what happened here. That's usually the case with this kind of incident... the shooter kills a bunch of people, then kills himself. That's the plan.

I sincerely hope that the media stops heading toward the ASD connection - as there really is no connection. What I wonder, however, if AL had been heading into schizophrenia or even schizoaffective disorder (bipolar moods in combination with disorder of thoughts). He is at the typical age of onset....and early schizophrenia could be easily misdisgnosed as his ASD symptoms worsening: social withdrawal, lack of connection with others, lack of adherence to social standards. Though most people with thought-disorders do not become violent, there is a subset who do. One of my first jobs as a ciunselor was seeing adults trim a state mental hospital. Two of them had shot and killed their parents as young adults.

The lack of insurance coverage for mental health treatment is apalling. A child at risk is a great deal more likely to die from untreated mental illness than tetanus or dyptheria or enlarged tonsils (random covered treatments that popped into my mind).

Sigh.

I saw a counselor on tv this morning making that same plea, "insurance doesn't cover it"..... except... this was a very rich young man. Although it's a misinformed, twisted streatch to attribute his violence to his autism, still, if they were that far along in seeking treatment then he was getting treatment. I think there was something wrong: they tried something.

If there's one thing I'm certain of it's that "access to mental health treatment" was not an issue with this particular family.

I do think everyone seems worried that this will refelect badly on their own demographic. The homeschoolers saw that he was homeschooled shortly in highschool and they said, "great! now the world's going to look down on homeschoolers." When I told the hubby the father divorced and remarried he said, "so it's the parents fault". ?! etc

That insecurity everyone's feeling might just turn into a witch hunt and then a mob cry for more regulations on "those guys", whoever seems logical (beyond just outlawing mass murder). Whatever parts added up to this do not create that reaction in most people.

Monetarily maybe. But the mental health system is difficult to navigate ...one needs to be extraordinarily determined to find what one might need. Additionally having a mentally ill 20 year old child can be like watching a head-on collision with no ability to stop it. Not that this was the case here, we don't know, but many parents i see want help for their young adult child but have no legal grounds to force treatment until things are very severe.

There is no simple answer IMO. We grasp at causes as a way to feel in control of something so horrific. My heart breaks for those families. We lost a son 3 years ago this January...and it is unimaginable the pain. I cannot even think to have lost a child through such violence.

Uh, she provided him training in the use of small arms.

Nobody said this.

JonLaw said it's "often" possible to tell who is "kind of prone" to doing crazy things. I wrote that I agreed about being able to spot people who need to be monitored or helped.

If people had been paying attention to the Columbine kids, their plans would have been obvious. Everything was detailed (well in advance) on paper, on video, and on a website. Multiple people failed in ordinary ways, and the result was disastrous.

IMO, there are systemic and social barriers that allow kids like the Columbine pair to slip through the cracks. This is why it's important to analyze everything leading up to these events and look for patterns, both in the perpetrators themselves and the responses to them in the years/months leading up to attacks. Did the shooters stockpile weapons? Did they create extremist writings? Were there diagnoses of mental illness or allegations thereof? Did people make credible complaints about the shooters? Did the cops take the complaints seriously (in the case the Columbine, the answers to the last two questions are yes and no.)? Etc. When we try to look for individual causes (they were goths, they were bullied, there were guns in the house, it was a reaction to meds, no one knew, etc.), we set ourselves up for another round of shootings.

These problems are complex, which is why it's important to find a way to identify not only the signs that might help identify someone who needs help, but also the signs that might identify when others are overlooking things they shouldn't.

We are very un "prepped" but surely sane "prepping" runs to learning to grow your own food, installing sufficient solar power and off grid water, and maybe getting a goat - not gun stockpiling guns?

You have to be able to defend yourself from the roaming well-armed war bands or they will forcibly take all of your food, occupy your house, and marry your daughters.

Indeed. She did this because she's a prepper, and the line between "prepper" and "paranoid delusional" is fuzzy at best.

So in this case, another hypothesis could be that access to mental health services was not available to this kid, but not because of money... but because his illness was shared by his mom to some degree, who may not have seen it as an illness at all.

And then there's the other, more common reason why people don't seek mental health services: social stigma.

Our society has been engineered so that if someone doesn't voluntarily seek help, and have the means to pay, the alternative access point is prison.

I have water in the basement, and we're trying to get the house insulated better. There are not a lot of threats where we live, but I was in an ice-storm once, where the difference between having decent insulation a camp stove, and some water on hand, and not having it was the difference between noticing how beautiful the ice was, and how long the power was out for!

But now I think I won't tell anyone about the water

I find the coverage to be incredibly unpleasant in a number of ways, and it scares me

Hi everyone - I know it can be difficult to discuss this issue in a matter related to gifted education, but please keep the topic on education or social/emotional issues. Otherwise, I will have to remove posts or lock the thread.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Mark

Does Public Discourse Help ?
People said it because other people said it. They did not know why it was being said and heard everywhere. . . 'The source of public opinion?' said Claude Slagenhop in a radio speech. 'There is no source of public opinion. It is spontaneously general. It is a reflex of the collective instinct of the collective mind.' -Atlas Shrugged

will it lead to better mental health policies ?
I think they've been saying this about politics lately, politicians don't create wealth, you can't legislate us off the fiscal cliff. Similarly, You can't legislate better screening and treatment than what there is. You can fund research or research better treatments. I love the Buddhist quote, "may any merit earned by my karma relieve the sufferings of all sentient beings."

huh, related to giftedness. . .
possibly existential depression? Mass murder is suicide.

i guess it's less of a gifted issue than a current events issue
with traumatized feelings, fear, and puzzling

Ths thread started out as a gifted issue - how the misperceptions and sometimes downright irresponsible reporting could possibly affect our gifted children who often appear odd to the rest of the world in which they navigate. I quit posting a while ago when it wandered off into myriad speculations and assumptions.

I'm with ABQMom. Originally I started to read/post because I was so upset about the media betrayal and throwing around terms like "highly gifted" and "socially awkward". Once when my DD was about 5 someone told me very matter-of-factly, like she was trying to help me, that my DD would be more likely to develop mental illness because "brains that work that fast develop problems later on". What a thing for a mom of a bright and active little girl to hear - phew!

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
― Marie Curie

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/opinion/dont-blame-autism-for-newtown.html?_r=0

"This country needs to develop a better understanding of the complexities of various conditions and respect for the profound individuality of its children. We need to emphasize that being introverted doesn’t mean one has a developmental disorder, that a developmental disorder is not the same thing as a mental illness, and that most mental illnesses do not increase a person’s tendency toward outward-directed violence."

I came in tonight to ask whether anybody thought things had just gotten a little easier or a whole lot harder for those of us with AS children, and here was this thread already! Thanks, Lisa.

With all the discussion in the news about Asperger's/Autism and mental health issues, it seems possible that getting help might be easier -- but on the other hand, there just became a lot more stigmatism about it, too. I just don't know.

(Edited to add: LMAO the next morning when I realized I had typed "stigmatism" there. Amazing I didn't combine three words and make it say "stigmatatism". Let's try "stigma", shall we, when not so exhausted?)

I do know that Bill O'Reilly was talking about how he didn't fit into society (shooter, not O'Reilly, though a case could be made either way), and then he called the guy a "weirdo", at which point I changed the channel.

I sympathize with the "I am ...Mom" -- while I've never had anything near as extreme as her experiences, I did say when DS was 4, he's going to grow up to kill us in our sleep someday. I haven't felt that in a long time, but there is still a lot of anger in the kid, and a lot of self-justification, and not enough empathy. It's a long, uphill road.

This is perhaps too off giftedness and I have no issue with it being deleted if need be as I am conscious that it may be perceived as political, though I mean only to comment on the cultural differences in the discourse about the cause of this tragedy.

From my perspective - as a non American - this discussion is fascinating. In my country the focus has been on guns (we have gun control and all the same problems with access to treatment for ASDs and mental health issues, we have no mandated gifted programs etc - and yet no mass killings in nearly 20 years). I follow various news sources from around the world and there has been almost no mention of giftedness, ASD or anything beyond guns as a cause of the deaths in this situation from any country other than the USA (I say cause of the deaths as there has of course been recognition that he was mentally ill and that this was likely a factor in him taking up weapons). Rather, internationally the response has followed the argument that all the other issues cease to be an issue *from a mass killing perspective* (obviously, as mentioned, the psychological issues exist regardless) if the person doesn't have easy access to guns.

I note it because I found it fascinating that this becomes about giftedness/ASD only in the States and I mention it not as a criticism, just as noting the difference in cultural spin. It must make it extremely hard for parents of kids who do not fit 'easily' socially.

The New York Times and Wall Street Journal are writing about guns, both in the news and editorial pages, as you can see online, for example http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/us/politics/pro-gun-democrats-signal-openness-to-limits.html .

To be fair, you're interested in speculations and assumptions on how this will affect the gifted community at large, rather than how it happened in the first place, and what role his giftedness or lack thereof may have played in it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/opinion/dont-blame-autism-for-newtown.html
Don’t Blame Autism for Newtown
By PRISCILLA GILMAN
New York Times
December 17, 2012

...

Let me clear up a few misconceptions. For one thing, Asperger’s and autism are not forms of mental illness; they are neurodevelopmental disorders or disabilities. Autism is a lifelong condition that manifests before the age of 3; most mental illnesses do not appear until the teen or young adult years. Medications rarely work to curb the symptoms of autism, but they can be indispensable in treating mental illness like obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Underlying much of this misreporting is the pernicious and outdated stereotype that people with autism lack empathy. Children with autism may have trouble understanding the motivations and nonverbal cues of others, be socially naïve and have difficulty expressing their emotions in words, but they are typically more truthful and less manipulative than neurotypical children and are often people of great integrity. They can also have a strong desire to connect with others and they can be intensely empathetic — they just attempt those connections and express that empathy in unconventional ways. My child with autism, in fact, is the most empathetic and honorable of my three wonderful children.

Additionally, a psychopathic, sociopathic or homicidal tendency must be separated out from both autism and from mental illness more generally. While autistic children can sometimes be aggressive, this is usually because of their frustration at being unable to express themselves verbally, or their extreme sensory sensitivities. Moreover, the form their aggression takes is typically harmful only to themselves. In the very rare cases where their aggression is externally directed, it does not take the form of systematic, meticulously planned, intentional acts of violence against a community.

And if study after study has definitively established that a person with autism is no more likely to be violent or engage in criminal behavior than a neurotypical person, it is just as clear that autistic people are far more likely to be the victims of bullying and emotional and physical abuse by parents and caregivers than other children. So there is a sad irony in making autism the agent or the cause rather than regarding it as the target of violence.

...

Well, the author loses me the instant that she throws mental illness under the bus. She argues for a position that spectrum disorders are "disabling" which would be fine-- but then she makes the statement "not mental illness," which would also be fine (as a means of distinguishing what autism IS, and what is it NOT) but to tie the two things together the way she does it just plain MEAN.


Those two categories are very definitely not mutually exclusive, which is an important point missing in the essay. I find it mean-spirited and selfish of her that she throws THOSE kids under her ideological bus. Life is plenty hard enough for people with mental illness, and no, not all of THEM can just "take a pill" either, as the author implies. They have families that love them and struggle to meet their needs, too. She just made it harder by making the comparison in an ignorant manner.

I know what she's getting at, and I don't disagree with her on that score. But I do object to her fairly nasty/sly implication that "mental illness" might well be both LINKED to violence/aggression and is certainly "not a disability like autism." I consider THAT a sad irony.

Just as ridiculous is the assertion that spectrum disorders are not "real" disabilities because people with mental illness are significantly more likely to die from a cause related to that illness. This is true, of course; it's just irrelevant and unhelpful, and it uselessly implies that the one thing is "more of a disability" than the other. Yuck. I hate the "more disabled than" rhetoric with a purple PASSION.

I feel sad and discouraged by the media coverage. I'm with Val (and Jon, and others); it's just too simplistic to see this through a single lens and with blinders on.

Those who are (predictably) using this as a personal soapbox are marginalizing other important elements here, and they aren't doing it for altruistic reasons, but for selfish ones. Even people who seem to have the best of intentions are making this about THEMSELVES-- and mostly, about separating themselves from any "taint" of similarity as a means of reassuring themselves that it couldn't happen to them. That, too, saddens me.

"It wasn't because of _______" (guns/autism/giftedness/radical acceleration/broken home/bad parenting/mental illness) misses the larger issues here.

Or maybe it IS the larger issue that all of those statements are dancing around-- why is it so unacceptable to be different in this country?? I think this is the underlying reason why such things keep happening in my country. We marginalize. It's what we do. We look for DIFFERENCES, not commonality. How sad.

I like what Howler wrote, and I think that's really how I let myself get side-tracked... the fact that the mom was described as a "prepper" makes me want to pretend I don't even take _reasonable_ precautions. The fact that the kid is described as "smart" makes me nervous about describing my kids or friends or self as smart. The fact that he's been described as having ASD makes me shy of the assessment we're on a waitlist for. People had covered most of the other bases, so I went for that one. but...

I hadn't put it together before Howler, but this is ALL about creating a strong us/them that insulates ME from feeling unsafe.

Except creating a strong us/them that insulates a person is probably part of how some guy comes to kill as if the lives of others aren't important.

So. Um. Maybe what the "I am..." woman did has some redeeming features in that way.

So maybe a smart person would make an effort not to draw strong lines of separation, in some way that does not involve posting photos of one's children publicly...

Or is that "wise?"

Sorry Bostonian - I can see how my post might have read as implying there was no discussion about guns in the states. What I had meant was that it seemed that it was only in the States that ASDs/mental illness/giftedness were being talked about much as significant contributing factors. Which in itself perhaps means outside the States we're failing to consider the bigger picture too (not meaning his ASD and/or giftedness were causes, just that such an act can't really be attributed to a single factor).

This article makes a similar point.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/health/fearing-a-stigma-for-people-with-autism.html
Fearing a Stigma for People With Autism
By AMY HARMON
New York Times
December 18, 2012
Amid reports from neighbors and classmates that the gunman in the shooting rampage in, Newtown, Conn., had an autism variant known as Asperger syndrome, adults with the condition and parents of children with the diagnosis are fighting what they fear may be a growing impression that it is associated with premeditated violence.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders, who are often bullied in school and in the workplace, frequently do suffer from depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. A divorce mediator who met with the parents of Adam Lanza, the gunman, during their divorce told The Associated Press that the couple had said that their son’s condition had been diagnosed as Asperger syndrome.

But experts say there is no evidence that they are more likely than any other group to commit violent crimes.

“Aggression in autism spectrum disorders is almost never directed to people outside the family or immediate caregivers, is almost never planned, and almost never involves weapons,” said Dr. Catherine Lord, director of the Center for Autism and the Developing Brain at NewYork-Presbyterian hospital. “Each of these aspects of the current case is more common in other populations than autism.”

thanks, this last post is great.