In case you missed it, she’s actually PUTTING HER 13-YEAR-OLD SON OUT THERE, in order to get attention for HERSELF and her oversized ego.
Telling family members, teachers, counselors, therapists and (maybe) even neighbors about a potentially dangerous child’s violent outbursts in order to warn them or allow them to be guarded in their interactions with him might well indeed be considered prudent or possibly even brave (as certainly there is still somewhat of a stigma to having a kid who has issues) but to recklessly, even gleefully splash this irretrievable information (including actual photos of the poor, troubled young man) all over the internet and airwaves, in effect telling the world “Hey everybody, my boy here is fixin’ to butcher y’all in yer sleep, and just remember, I told ya so!!!” isn’t what I would consider responsible parenting, although it’s damn fine attention whoring, something that Donald Trump would be in envy of…
I don’t care how good of a parent she is or what her motives are. There are children who have behavioral issues that put them on a road to do horrible things. Currently we don’t have much to offer parents in dealing with these kids. Her blog post made this point and is causing some people to try to think up solutions. Unless you believe her parenting style causes children to have the issues in the first place, I think it’s short-sighted to spend more time attacking her character than discussing the problem.
Also, the previously referenced take-down of her was awful. She makes an off-hand comment about her frustration and it’s interpreted to mean she literally wants to throttle her children. She makes a biblical reference and it’s interpreted to mean she wants to sacrifice her kid. I’d say it was lazy but the author of that thing obviously spent a lot of time combing through her blog.
ETA: Of course there’s currently no solid evidence that any of this has much to do with the shooting that happened on Friday.
The “losing him” quote is unattributed, and in the context of the report, seems to be related to his social isolation and not to anything specially dangerous. This unnamed source seems to be the same source regarding the self-mutilation. I am not aware of any statistics that link self-injury (cutting, burning, etc.) to increased likelihood of violence. Self-mutilation is concerning, of course, I don’t want to deny that, but there’s no context for this description, and no verification of the claims.
The “don’t turn your back on him” statement is unexplained - was it because that Lanza might leave the house unexpectedly, as people with autism spectrum disorders (which Lanza has been described as having, but I haven’t seen official diagnostic documentation) tend to elope, or was it because Lanza was likely to harm himself, or was it because Lanza was likely to raise the mother’s arsenal and use the guns to kill people?
Don’t get me wrong, it’s clear to me that people are claiming that Lanza had some difficulties that presented to others as social oddities or other behaviors that probably did place him on the autism spectrum. But again, there’s nothing yet that indicates to me that he’s so unlike the other people in America on that spectrum (who are also liable to self-harm, or elope, or act in odd ways), that there was a clear indication that he was about to blow a fuse.
I think someone may have said this to me earlier and I didn’t grasp what it meant, but the only source for the Asperger’s “diagnosis” is Lanza’s surviving brother. He said he felt his brother might’ve had something like Asperger’s based on his odd behavior. It stands to reason that he actually had something much more dangerous that a layperson wouldn’t have recognized as distinct from autism or Asperger’s. And don’t these types of disorders often get worse in a patient’s teens and 20s?
Really? Why does it “stand to reason” that a person that NO ONE has been able to describe other than “odd” or “weird” or “possibly ASD” actually had something much more dangerous?
Because, obviously, he killed a bunch of children and ended up dead. What he did wasn’t rational, not even from the most amoral of perspectives; there was obviously something seriously wrong with his judgement.
Because - not to put too fine of a point on it or anything - he murdered 27 people. He’s been described by acquaintances as withdrawn and awkward, which doesn’t mean much of anything. His brother, who would be one of the people who knew him best, proposed that maybe he had Asperger’s. I’m saying people who have mentioned ASD( the brother and I think one other family friend or relative) aren’t psychologists and they might be mistaking a much more dangerous illness for Asperger’s because Asperger’s is well known. Really, how would this guy’s brother knew if he had Asperger’s or anything else that causes withdrawn behavior without a formal diagnosis? But the drips and drabs of information that are coming out suggest this guy had problems that were not being addressed.
Rather than repeat this same objection every time a fresh victim wanders in, how about you describe any possible explanation for what was wrong with him other than “he had a dangerous mental illness?”
I am interested to hear what could lead a person who was not dangerously mentally ill to kill his mother, 28 other people, and then himself.
In your other post you asked about “online hissy fits.” Now you’re talking about “evidence of sociopathic behavior.” Those things are so different in scope that I don’t know how you can make them sound similar. No, having a hissy fit online doesn’t suggest you might be a sociopath. Anybody can lose his/her temper. More severe harassment like cyberstalking or bullying? Yes, that could be evidence of a real problem. But you can’t describe something like that as a hissy fit.
Kolga, I understand you are, for whatever reason, eager to ensure people with mental illness are not stigmatized. If you would please spend more time reading things people are posting about this tragedy you will find many, many people on the SDMB are saying that a more progressive, open, and demystified attitude towards mental illness is something needed to prevent these tragedies.
But it is getting a little ridiculous when you challenge the common sense opinion that Adam Lanza might have had a dangerous mental illness. The reason people are opining that Lanza had something dangerous wrong with him is that HE WAS DANGEROUS. It is a fact beyond dispute that Lanza did something irrational and exceedingly lethal. It is the simple truth that he walked into an elementary school with a brace of guns and slaughtered innocent people.
I think that a reasonable, intelligent person can look at that behaviour and conclude, based on the evidence of Lanza’s actual behaviour, that there is a very high probability Lanza was mentally ill. The precise nature of his illness we do not yet know, but it is an extremely reasonable deduction that he was ill. Indeed, I find it hard to construct even a hypothetical and realistic scenario in which Lanza was not mentally ill, though I am welcome to hear theories.
I suppose what I am saying is that I’m baffled at your resistance to the mere presumption Lanza had something wrong with him, when we have extremely strong behavioural evidence that something was wrong with him. Your “there’s no official diagnosis” isn’t a relevant point. People do not become ill because the diagnosis is made. The diagnosis is made because they are already ill.
Everyone continues to miss the point of my questions. What was Adam Lanza doing before he killed twenty-seven people that make everyone so sure that he was exhibiting behavior that needed intervention that he was not getting? Being odd, weird, withdrawn, ASD, or whatever, without any other signs of dangerousness, is not enough evidence that the person will eventually become dangerous. In order for a person to be considered dangerous, they have to actually be doing something that is dangerous. I’ve read nothing about his pre-rampage behavior that would indicate that prior to the rampage, he was clearly dangerous.
The fact that we need better mental health care in this country doesn’t seem to relate to this case since no one has reported anything that Adam Lanza was doing that seemed to need psychiatric intervention prior to the shooting.
The sheer unlikelihood that someone with no underlying mental illnesses - or nothing other than Asperger’s - would shoot his mother to death in her bed, go to his old elementary school, and then murder 26 more people. I have a great deal of trouble believing there were no other danger signs with this guy. I think that would make him unique among these types of rampage murderers.
At this point we have no official diagnosis on the shooter and we have no idea if he’d been diagnosed with anything by anyone qualified - and if there was any diagnosis we don’t know if it was accurate. So real certainty may not be forthcoming. But it’s not a stretch to say he probably had some serious problems that weren’t being adequately dealt with. We may never know what was happening in their home and what his mother saw, but I think it’s very likely that there were problems she didn’t know how to handle or didn’t want to face up to. They didn’t want for money, but I doubt he was getting the kind of help he needed. And I think that’s what needs to change. I think people need to know that if they have family members who are seriously ill, they aren’t alone and don’t have to try to handle it by themselves.
And I think most of us share that concern. The reality is that most people with mental illnesses aren’t dangerous, and even most people with conditions like schizophrenia aren’t dangerous to other people. All of that makes it difficult to know who might be dangerous and who isn’t. After every one of these shootings people start worrying that the public is going to take it out on the mentally ill en masse, and I understand that concern, too - but it’s never happened and I don’t think it will this time either.
I get what Kolga is alluding to, and I have somewhat the same question – that is, it is obviously the case that when this person set out to commit mass murder and suicide he was nuts, but might it not also be the case that he may have exhibited no obvious symptoms before that of being nuts, other than stuff which, with benefit of hindsight, seems perhaps ominous (like being a loner, or stuff that could be plausably attributed to Asperger’s)?
Mind you, not all the evidence is in and has been made public, and given that pretty well everything intitally reported about this case has turned out 100% incorrect, it isn’t a good idea to make snap judgments either way …
It just seems that we are filling an informational void here - that since he was clearly nuts to commit his crimes, he must have been exhibiting danger signs and symptoms with predictive value which a reasonable person could and should have picked up in advance of his crimes. That may or may not be the case. In fact, it is obvioulsy a whole lot more terrifying if it is not the case.
That’s certainly true. We’re speculating without much evidence.
Look at the other people who have committed these types of crimes in recent years. I don’t know if you can find a single one who wasn’t giving off gigantic warning signs. The closest to “no warning signs” might’ve been the guy who shot up that Sikh temple, and he was a loner alcoholic with longstanding ties to the white supremacist movement. Does that mean even a stranger on the street would have known these people were disturbed? No. People close to them? Yes. Which is why I’d like to see more resources focused on mental health and an effort to encourage people to try to recognize when someone close to them is seriously ill and to face up to it instead of going into denial.
This is a bit of a disingenuous response, given I was responding to April’s comment about people she personally saw in a mental hospital who she thought were dangerous, not about Adam Lanza.
I think we’re talking past each other. What we might have done for Adam Lanza misses the point. We can’t save the kid, he already shot up a school, he’s already dead. The past is done. What we can do is take this lesson and institute a more robust, supportive, and accessible system so that people in the future get help and we thusly reduce the frequency and likelihood of these things ever happening again.
You can focus on the specifics – that we don’t have – of Adam Lanza in particular, but I don’t view that as a particularly productive discussion. The past is over, best we can do is learn from it and do it better in the future. No, nothing is foolproof – but I’ve already said that, too.