Aspergers and Violence - Let’s Stop the Rush To Judgment

Asperger’s, Autism, and Violence or Mass Murder

Let’s Stop the Rush To Judgment




Whenever something horrible happens the public and the media
look for answers . . . factoids to explain what may be truly inexplicable.   Whatever
information can be discovered is tossed out into public view in the hope that
somehow a bunch of discrete facts and data points will somehow provide the
answers everyone is seeking.




This happens whether the event is a catastrophic fire, a
plane crash, or a mass killing.  Thanks
to the Internet, people all over the world speculate about what happened and
why, often in the absence of any firsthand information.  The result: a rush to judgment, and all too
often - innocent people harmed.




Sometimes these early speculations are prescient.  When reporters observed an aviation mishap
and said, “the same thing happened on another flight a few years ago,” that
report led to the discovery of a flaw in an aircraft’s design, and the potential
saving of many lives when a design defect was corrected.




Unfortunately, on other occasions, early speculation proves
unfounded, wrong, or irrelevant.  When
that happens, innocent people are often harmed by the rush to judgment.  I’m very concerned that is occurring right
now, as the public digests news reports about the Sandy Hook school murders.




Reporters are saying the killer had Asperger’s Syndrome, a
form of autism.  Every time a news story
does that – by tying “killer” and “Asperger’s” in the same sentence – they are
at some level implying that there is a connection between autism and mass
murder.   




There’s not.




Statisticians have a phrase for this situation:  Correlation does not imply causation.




Let me explain that by way of an example.  Three banks are robbed, in three different
cities.  Each bank had security cameras
trained on the entrances.  In each case,
a review of the tapes showed a white Toyota Camry turning into the parking lot,
moments before the robbery.




Was that a clue?  Was
the same car used to rob all three banks? 
No.  It was a random, irrelevant
coincidence.   In fact, white Camrys are
one of the most common cars in the country and we might observe them at the
scene of most anything, without any causative connection at all.




How about this factoid: 
Most school shooters are Caucasian males.  You might find that statement a little more
shocking than the previous one.  But it’s
true.  Does that mean every white male
Caucasian who enters a school is a potential mass murderer?  Of course not.




Suggesting a mass murderer had Asperger’s is much the same –
it may be true, but stating the fact does nothing to explain the crime, nor
does it help prevent other crimes in the future.   What it does do – and this is important – is
paint a whole swath of population – Asperger people – with a brush that says
“potential mass murderer.”




That, folks, is a problem, because the average person does
not know enough about Asperger’s to know it does not turn people into mass
murderers.   They file that factoid away
until the next time they see someone with Asperger’s.  Then, instead of giving him a fair shake,
they treat him as a potential killer. 
Everyone loses.  As an adult with
Asperger’s, who’s seen enough discrimination already, I’m not too happy about
that.




What can we do? 
There’s no way to “undo” a news story.




Going forward, perhaps the best thing we can do is explore
the question:  Can Asperger’s turn a
person into a mass murderer?  The simple
answer is no.  Here are the reasons why:




Asperger’s is an autism spectrum disorder.  People with Asperger’s typically have
difficulty reading the unspoken cues of other people.  You might say we are oblivious to the
language of emotion.




Yet we are emotional people. 
Many studies have shown folks with autism have very powerful emotions;
the problem is, we often can’t express those feelings in ways others can
recognize.  Sometimes our responses seem
inappropriate (we may smile when you expect us to look sad.)  Other times, an event that triggers a strong
emotional response in one person has no visible effect on a person with autism.




Lay people often take those signals to mean we Asperger
people don’t have feelings, or we don’t care about them, or that we lack
empathy.  Nothing could be farther from
the truth.




As the definition of autism and Asperger’s says:  This is a communication disorder. It’s not a
“lack of feeling” disorder.   In fact,
most clinicians who work with people on the autism spectrum will tell you
autistic people tend to care deeply for people in their lives, and have a
sweetness; a childlike gentleness – something totally at odds with what you’d
expect in a cold blooded killer.




There is nothing in the definition of Asperger’s or autism
that would make a person think we are a violent group.  That’s reinforced by criminal justice studies
telling us that people with autism are much less likely to commit violent
crimes than the average person.  Indeed,
those studies show autistic people are far more likely to be victims of
violence than perpetrators.




If you’re looking for a group of people to fear, we’re not
it.




So where does that leave us, in our quest to understand
these most recent killings?




Adam Lanza may well have had Asperger’s.  But that did not make him a killer.  Some other factor was at work.  Just as getting a cold doesn’t protect you
from catching measles, having an Asperger diagnosis does not mean you don’t
have a host of other issues as well.  One
can suffer from homicidal rages, and also be diagnosed with Asperger’s.  Those conditions are not mutually exclusive.




It's also worth noting the studies that have shown how
*anyone* may become violent, given the "right" (wrong) set of
circumstances.  It's true that people on
the autism spectrum have less propensity for violence than the average person,
but that does not mean they can't ever become violent.  If violence is a disease, no human is immune.




And that’s not the only possibility.  There are plenty of other frightening and
disagreeable combinations in the world of psychiatry.




In fact, a child who grows up with a disability that leads
to bullying (like Asperger’s) may develop violent feelings toward his
tormenters.  Most times, those feelings
stay inside, to the detriment of the victim. 
Sometimes, though, the victims strike back.  When that happens I’d say it was the
bullying, and not the disability, which turned that person violent.




One day we may have a hard medical test for autism –
including Asperger’s.  Until then, it’s
diagnosed by observation – a process that is unfortunately more prone to error
than we would like.  The Asperger
diagnosis attributed to Adam might even have been a mistake; sociopathy can
masquerade as mild autism or Asperger’s.




It’s easy to see how the two conditions might be
confused.  After all, one is
characterized by a weak ability to show feelings, while the other is founded on
an absence of feeling within, and a lack of innate moral foundation.  Those two conditions may look very similar,
but the outcomes are not. One leads to anxiety, depression, and social
failure.  The other may lead to evil, and
a much darker place.




I’m not Adam’s therapist, and I have no knowledge of his
case, but I would not be surprised if there was quite a bit more to his
story.  Much of it may never be known.




I wish I had some simple solutions to propose, so that we
might prevent these horrific crimes in the future.  Unfortunately, I don’t.   A reading of history shows us that most rampage
killers turned deadly with little or no warning.  Many had no prior history of serious violence
and some had no criminal records at all.




Yet there are things we can do.  We can take stronger steps to address
bullying, and we can offer counsel to those adults in greatest need.  Many studies have shown that violence is a
last resort for people at the end of their rope.  We have the power to give those people a
lifeline, so they won’t turn to the gun.




To me, this crime and others like it show the great need for
mental health reform.   We have no
facility in this country for “mental health checkups,” and we’ve pitifully few
lifelines to help those on that slippery slope to suicide or murder, whatever
the cause.  If I were to express a
Christmas wish here, it would be that our politicians see that failing, and
act.




Best wishes for the holiday season,

John Elder Robison




And remember - RAISING CUBBY is coming - March 12, 2013


(c) 2007-2011 John Elder Robison