What the media is getting wrong about the shooting in Newtown, CT – Part 2 of 5, Psychiatric disorders, developmental disabilities and trouble coping are three different things.

The day of the shooting, Lanza’s brother said that his brother had Asperger’s.  Soon the media was discussing this as a mental illness.  It’s not.  Mental illnesses, or psychiatric disorders, are mood and thought disorders, such as depression, schizophrenia, Asperger’s is considered the mildest on the autism spectrum disorders (ASD).  Neither mental illnesses nor ASDs are caused by stress, although stress can certainly make things worse and frequently a stressful event will trigger an episode of a mental illness. For the sake of differentiating, I’ll put ADD, LD, PDD and the various initial disorders in the same category as ASDs. All people who suffer from these are born that way (thank you Lady gaga, you were rights on many points). Stress and trauma cause people to be upset, but they are supposed to.  Freud said that all he could promise people was normal unhappiness.  Psychiatric illness, initial disorders and trauma in your life are three very different ways of suffering.

  

TV commentators were quick to way that ASDs do not make people violent.  I’m sure that they were concerned about a backlash against people with ASDs but unfortunately I have met many children on the ASD who were extremely violent, from kids with mild Asperger’s to profoundly autistic kids who never developed speech and were also mentally retarded.  I know one child who left home to go to school but otherwise never went outside because her behavior was uncontrollable.  

Those suffering from psychiatric illness are more likely to be the recipient of physical abuse than the other way around.  

 

“Experts” on talk shows have stated that parents shouldn’t be concerned about kids who were always shy but about kids who suddenly change into shyness when they were previously outgoing.  That isn’t true.  Kids with the initial disorders and those with psychi9atric illness, again, follow Lady Gaga’s pronouncement.  At what point should families and schools be worried?  If you know anything at all about human beings, the answer is when you feel something is wrong.

 

First, we have to get all these categories straight in order to understand them.  Second, we have to face that these are all serious disorders that can have violent and tragic consequences.  People really suffer from all of these; it isn’t an issue of just being a little “weird”.  Third, we still know very little about Lanza.  The facts should go a long way in determining what went on in his head.