It is increasingly apparent that the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy has ripped open a deep wound in the American heart — particularly for parents of kids with mental health challenges.
Unlike the aftermath of other, similar tragedies, it seems that no amount of conversation, in person or online, helps ease the pain we’re feeling about the events in Newtown, Conn. on Dec. 14, 2012.
No doubt part of our shock and sorrow has to do with the ages of those gunned down, and the accumulated trauma from the sheer number of previous school shootings. But I believe there’s much more going on here. The children who died as a result of Adam Lanza’s bullets and his apparent mental illness may not have been our own flesh and blood, but the agony of saying goodbye to them has become a shared experience filled with equal parts grief and survivors’ guilt.
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It is interesting that while you are, rightfully, arguing against stigmatizing mental illness, you stigmatize autism with little difficulty. The statement that “we now know”autism is not sufficient to explain the shooter’s actions implies that it, at one point, was sufficient to explain the tragedy. Persons on the autism spectrum are , statistically, no more likely to be violent towards others than the general population.
It is far more likely that a toxic combination of poor mental health treatment (for both Adam and his mother), societal fear and condemnation of both mental health issues and Aspergers, paranoia in the form of weapons collection and usage, and lack of family support all contributed to this horrific event. Just as we shouldn’t make assumptions about those with mental health issues, nor should we do the same to those on the spectrum.
I knew she had serious issues when I met her 35 years ago.
I ignored them out of “love”. Suicide 3-22-10.
Good God. “Profound empathy” for Adam Lanza? That is sick. That man, who seems not to have contributed a single useful thing to any other human life, but rather to have been a burden from the moment of his birth, murdered 20 six and seven year olds, mostly little girls, in cold blood. He murdered his mother. He premeditated carefully enough that he tried to hide his nasty secrets by destroying his computer’s hard drive before committing the most abominable of the acts which demonstrated that he was something far worse than a rabid dog. Twenty parents of first grade children will have their souls rubbed raw every day for the rest of their lives by the empty bedrooms he left behind. Get help, and quickly, Victoria. The help, if any, that you are currently receiving is not working.
Jo — By saying autism or asperger’s doesn’t suffice… I was referring to the fact that among different mental disorders, these two are far less likely to involve paranoia, aggression, and even though violence cannot be explained away by any mental disorder, as soon as I heard the references to Adan Lanza’s autism, I felt intuitively that that diagnosis alone was impossible. That said, I am not a psychiatrist and have much more experience as a parent and advocate with schizophrenia and the pre-psychosis that often affects young men who may be in the initial stages of SZ — as was the case with my son. I appreciate your comment though and agree that my line may have been too flip or insensitive.
Here is what I don’t understand, please help me …
Why would Nancy Lanza, who knew her son had a mental illness, take her son Adam to a shooting range and help him practice with an assault rifle capable of firing multiple rounds like a machine gun? And why would she keep these dangerous weapons in the basement where her son spend most of his time?
This American affection with dangerous weapons needs to be placed where it belongs: weapons are dangerous, the mentally ill need help not guns, and in America the ones who do love guns are often mentally less than stable and only a trigger away from insanity!
A cache of high powered weapons, plus training how to use these weapons, plus isolation, plus, perhaps, violent video games (just found out there is actually a game called Kindergarten Killers, you can google it; warning though crudely animated does children brutally shot and bleeding) added up to one of the most horrific events in recent history. It is not just one thing, but a whole list of things that led to this.
Also, I like the previous comment: “the mentally ill need help not guns”.
Amen
The late Mrs. Lanza is proof that the maternal instinct to protect boys who are not fully human is not an instinct that society can afford to endorse.
Too soon to judge without the facts. My love to the victims’ families and the survivors.