s/o Autism and violence

[Katy]

So I've seen little bits in the media about autism spectrum and violence.  And I've read that it's statistically a risk factor in one of those Gavin De Becker books about fear and safety.  But I see moms with kids on the spectrum adamantly deny the connection -  and it's the biggest source of negative reviews of Gavin's books.   I don't know anything about the statistics, but I do have a nephew on the spectrum (he's a lot more like Sheldon of Big Bang Theory) so I'm wondering what IS the connection, if there is one?  And how can we prevent this from happening in the future?

[Rosie_0801]

Any violence from mine was incidental and usually inflicted in the pursuit of cuddles. Ow. Pointy elbows.

[Tohru]

Not sure if I want to jump into this boiling pot or not :)

 

One of my children has several friends on the autism spectrum.  One friend is extremely negative (constantly angry, rude, overly sensative and cynical, explosive, breaks other's toys, etc), I can totally see that child flipping out and becoming violent toward a person.  I think the parents severely underestimate this child's damage potential. 

On the other end, another child we know is too extrememly positive (happy, smiling even when some one is sad or angry, friendly all the time regardless of what is going on) - that child, I could not ever imagine harming anything or anyone. 

 

Who knows? I don't think there is much one can do to prevent an action from an unpredictable person.

 

 

[LucyStoner]

My 10 year old with autism does have issues with aggression, mostly towards himself and his brother but also at times towards me and my husband. Never, thus far, towards an unrelated person. It is a lot of work and there are no guarantees but I hope that all we are doing for him helps him adapt and develop the skills he will need as a teen and adult to manage his anger and respond healthily to stress.

[sewingmama]

I don't have a child with autism but have friends who do.

 

Yes the ones I know have the ability to be aggressive....but it is mostly to do with the frustrations with communication rather then planned attacks. One boy in particular I will not let my children go near without supervision because he is very aggressive over toys and things that are his. However, I know his home situation and I would hazard a guess that his aggression is 2% autism related and 98% how he is dealt with at home.

 

My DS2 who is NT has issues with aggression....as did my DD when she was younger and had speech issues. My DD is sweet as they come now that her issues have been dealt with....I'm still working on my DS.

 

The point is...anyone has the capacity to be violent ..NT or otherwise. It's how it's handled that is the key to it's prevention. Being autisic does not mean you will be any more violent then the average kid who is frustrated due to LD's or speech impairment etc.

 

Reading this guys manifesto it was very clear he had a lot more going on in his psyche then just autism. Just from reading his "plan' you could tell his thought processes were not right and very grandiose. Did he really think he would get through that entire plan over a several day period without police interruption? Seriously, killing the roomates, setting fire to the sorority house, chopping off heads and displaying them, driving through a public area and running down everyone he saw and THEN being able to go to his home and murder his step mother and brother? Anyone with an ounce of sense would know the plan was crazy and he would never evade capture before pulling it all off in public like that.

 

The guy had a lot more going on then autism...I can assure you.

[jewellsmommy]

I think like any other condition, there are people who have ______ and are aggressive and there are people who have _____ and are not aggressive. Fill in the blank with bi-polar, asd, adhd, or whatever.

 

I have known one child on the spectrum (but with other factors) who was very aggressive. He would be fine one minute and then you better hope he didn't have scissors the next. He could be scary. I knew one boy with aspergers at our co-op who I never saw get aggressive. He, though, was obsessed with weapons. He just liked them. No violent tendencies at all.

 

Ds takes a med that specifically mentions that it is a treatment used for those with autism. It is to help control aggression/violent outbursts, but ds is not on the spectrum. Another, non-scectrum, boy at our church also takes this med.

 

Completely anecdotal but I think it has to do with how well a particular child handles frustration and or anxiety. In ds all frustration leads to aggression. In dd frustration leads to her shutting down and inward/locking up. Neither is on the spectrum, but if they were I suspect that they would handle frustration with the same mechanism. Autism may make a child more likely to become frustrated though.

[Kathryn]

My oldest is autistic. Until he began medication a year ago, he had a hard time with his emotions and impulses. He had violent tantrums/meltdowns almost daily. But, those were very much "in the moment" episodes that he couldn't control and always felt badly about afterwards. And he has not had a single one since he started medication last summer.

[AFwife Claire]

My Down's Syndrome uncle was killed when he was in his 30s by a severely autistic man.  They were both working at a Goodwill-type place, and my uncle was in the bathroom when this man came in and proceeded to beat him into a coma, and he died a few days later.  It was later determined that doctors had been lessening the dosages of several of his medications, and his parents were so terribly distraught and upset by what he did.  My grandparents obviously were too, but I think they were madder at the doctors always thinking less medicine=better.  It was just a tragic situation all around.

 

But still, I know several autistic children now, and I would never just assume they would be violent.  This other man apparently had signs of violence and aggression for years and years, and he was living in a group home at the point he killed my uncle because his parents couldn't handle him.  But I think the right medicines were making a difference.  So sad.  My uncle and I shared a birthday, so I always felt close to him.  He was killed when I was in high school, so about 25 years ago.  I am sure there have been many advances in medicines and in dosage protocol since then!

[Plink]

Agression has been found to be more common among Autistic children than the population in general.  A recent study cites a 53% aggression rate.  

 

It really is quite variable from person to person though.  The old saying "If you've met one person with Autism, you've met one person with Autism" continues to hold true. 

[Dmmetler]

I have a cat who was a formerly abused stray. He's a sweet cat, but if he's startled, he's going to draw blood because he goes immediately into fight or flight.  That's what I've seen in individuals with ASD who have sometimes violent behaviors-it's a sudden overload, and they truly aren't in control of their behavior at that moment, and usually are appalled at what they did after the fact.

 

That's so far from what happened in this shooting to be on a different planet.

 

 

 

 

[SKL]

I have a cousin with pretty severe autism.  He really is not responsible for his actions.  He has occasionally gotten "violent" when he was very disoriented and freaking out.  When he calms down later and starts to be relatively lucid, then he will feel sorry about what he has done.  He's not a creep.  Would he kill someone?  Never say never, but he would not premeditate a murder.  He doesn't think that way at all.  He hardly thinks about other people in the first place.  (He is institutionalized.)

 

OK, now treading carefully, I know someone on the spectrum who had some problems.  He got scared and told a trusted relative and took his guns to the trusted relative for safekeeping.  He was thinking bad thoughts but, being a good person at heart, he took action to make sure those bad thoughts didn't lead to hurt people.  (When he was a kid, he did a few things randomly out of anger, not to people but to property.  Nobody believed it was him because he was so quiet.)

 

I know a young person with Aspergers.  He is a sweet, mild-mannered person but struggles mightily to communicate and therefore to have social interactions.  Only once he got mildly "violent," when a classmate was intentionally busting up his project.  (I think his reaction was within a range of normal.)  Will he have trouble with antisocial behavior in adulthood?  Who knows?  I do feel he is and will be frustrated.  But it's a pretty long stretch between being frustrated and harming other people, once you are old enough to have developed a conscience.  Besides, he has people who he knows will love him no matter what.  Hopefully that means something.

[Alenee]

I didn't read all the way through so if it's a repeat, my apologies.  We need to remember than when discussing Autism that we are dealing with a *spectrum* disorder.  People on the spectrum are all over the place...there isn't one set of parameters that can define autism for all. 

 

That being said, a dear friend of mine has one child on the spectrum.  Severe.  Functioning on some levels, totally not on others.  He is violent.  And he's becoming moreso as he gets older.

[Night Elf]

If a person ignorant of spectrum disorders meets one, they may assume that all people on the spectrum are like that. I made that mistake before my son was diagnosed. When he was 4, he was attacked by another child at a Chuck E Cheese play place. I had to pull the boy off my son. My son was hysterical not knowing what on earth was going on. A little while later, a lady with that boy came up to our table and explained her son had Aspergers but he was being taught what was and wasn't proper behavior. She made him apologize to all of us. That incident left me believing all kids with Aspergers must be violent. So when my son was diagnosed 5 years later with the same thing, I was in total denial. My son had never exhibited that type of behavior. The doctor explained some things but I started reading everything I could get my hands on. I had never had a need to research and make myself knowledgeable about spectrum disorders and may have lived years making the wrong assumptions.

[Crimson Wife]

My little one came home from her special ed preschool with a nasty scrape on her face yesterday courtesy of one of her classmates with autism. She apparently had a toy that he wanted and he decided that the way to get it from her was to scratch her face. So yeah, aggression can definitely be a problem. Hopefully as the children grow and gain functional communication skills & maturity, it will be less of an issue than it is for them now at 4-5 y.o.

 

Youngest DD will sometimes bite or hit, but she only does it towards a parent, teacher/therapist, or her 'tween big sister. I think she's figured out that trusted adults (or near-adults) will not retaliate physically towards the aggressive act.

[kiwik]

Ds5 has been known to be quite violent. To the best of my knowledge he is not on the autism spectrum - my older non violent one may nudge the bottom of the spectrum or maybe it is just his absurd IQ and some minor sensory stuff.

[kroe1]

I have never heard of a mass murderer being autistic until this latest incident. I think to leap from this incident to "autism has violent tendencies so we must prevent it" is illogical. Since most mass murderers do not have autism, then it is more reasonable to go after all those without it.

 

I think there is some limited ability to profile mass murderers, but it is more related to sociopathic behavior rather than autistic.

[Melissa in Australia]

I have met people(children ) who have Autism that are not violent, and I have met some who are violent. One boy in particular I know has major meltdowns every day and becomes extremely violent. His very loving parents really put a HUGE amount of time trying to teach him better coping strategies and managing his violence skills etc...

[Carrie12345]

People on the spectrum often have one or more of a variety of co-morbid issues.  So, in addition to being at various points on the spectrum, the co-morbids have their own various manifestations that ALSO present differently at different points on the spectrum.

 

The only analogy I can think of is like starting with a generic person.  Okay, so we'll put females over here and males over there.  Now here are all these females.  Let's give them different heights..  And  a rainbow of skin tones. And then different eye colors. And hair colors. And shoe sizes.  Make some love pizza and give others celiac.  Give some a great love of flowers and others severe allergies.  Make some smart and others not so much. Some kind, and others real jerks.  (And do the same for all the males, too.)
Now here's a generic person.  Tell me what they're going to do in 20 years.

[umsami]

As others have said, it's a spectrum.  Being a male makes you more likely to commit a mass shooting, whether you're NT or not.  

 

I do know of friends whose sons on the spectrum have gotten more difficult to handle as they get older. I'm not sure if it is a frustration with dating/hormones or not.  But I don't know that it holds true for all.   But it also holds true for friends with NT sons too.

 

Remember an article I read after Sandy Hook, about how a Mom was now afraid of her teen son on the spectrum.  Hadn't been the case previously.  Bigger issue was that there was not a lot she could do for him.  We really need a strong revamp of mental health in this country, but I don't see it happening.

 

What kills me in this case and in the case of Sandy Hook (haven't looked at the others) is that the parents were doing their very best.  They had more material resources than many.  And still, it wasn't enough.  

[Laurie4b]

I don't think that one can automatically equate aggression in children to aggression in adults. With some kids NT or not, there is a continual line, but with many, many other children, self-modulation and control comes as they mature.

 

It is clear from the stuff this young man thought and posted that there was more going on than autism (narcissim + ?), and it's that "more" that drove the premediatated carnage. What autism may theoretically have contributed is possibly the rejection from women which might have been from social skills deficits (or it could have been because of blatant narcissism which got communicated to them) and/or that he had less of a support group because of social skills issues. Strong support groups can mitigate a number of issues in life.