Connecticut Shooting Raises Questions About Autism

From DisabilityScoop

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Connecticut Shooting Raises Questions About Autism

By MICHELLE DIAMENT

December 17, 2012

News that the gunman responsible for the Connecticut school shooting last week was reportedly diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome is coming with a dose of caution from autism advocates.

A law enforcement official told The Associated Press over the weekend that Adam Lanza, 20, had Asperger’s. Lanza killed 26 people at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Friday, most of them children in the first grade.

But autism advocates say the diagnosis does not explain the mass shooting and point out that there is no link between the type of planned violence that Lanza displayed and the developmental disorder.

“There is absolutely no evidence or any reliable research that suggests a linkage between autism and planned violence,” reads a statement from The Autism Society. “To imply or suggest that some linkage exists is wrong and is harmful to more than 1.5 million law abiding, non-violent and wonderful individuals who live with autism each day.”

Those who knew Lanza described him to The New York Times as shy and socially awkward. While those traits are characteristic of autism, self-advocates caution that having the condition does not suggest whether a person will do good or bad things in life.

“While the majority of statistics prove that we are infinitely more prone to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators of violence, we are not immune from becoming people capable of making terrible, horrible choices. No one is,” said Michael John Carley, executive director of the Global and Regional Asperger Syndrome Partnership.

Nonetheless, experts at the Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law said the tragedy calls attention to the lack of mental health services currently available.

“The real problem is that community based services — including mobile crisis services, assertive community treatment, peer supports and supportive housing — are in short supply, delaying hospital discharges and resulting in mental health crises that could otherwise be prevented,” the organization said in a statement. “A stronger commitment to vital community mental health services is long overdue and must be paired with improved gun laws in order to prevent future tragedies.”

Great article from Disability Scoop (...though not a surprise to those of us who live it every day!)

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Disability Caregiving Can Be Health Hazard, Study Finds

By SHAUN HEASLEY

December 17, 2012

Parents of children with developmental disabilities are experiencing health consequences stemming from their caregiving responsibilities, a first-of-its-kind study suggests.

Researchers found that parents of those with developmental disabilities have higher blood pressure than those with typically developing children. Given the risk of cardiovascular disease facing such parents, the finding “reinforces the notion that caregiving is hazardous to one’s health,” researchers report in the study published this month in the journal Research in Developmental Disabilities.

For the study, researchers followed a group of 35 parents of children with developmental disabilities and a control group of 30 other moms and dads. All of the parents wore a blood pressure monitor for 24 hours and each responded to questions about themselves, their stress level, the types of behaviors their child displays and the extent of support they receive from others.

Overall parents of kids with developmental disabilities reported a higher level of perceived stress, more challenging behaviors and less social support. What’s more, the parents of kids with special needs had higher blood pressure on average at all points during the 24-hour period, the study indicates.

Significantly, when researchers controlled for various factors, they found that challenging behaviors and stress level were not associated with the blood pressure level recorded, but the amount of social support was.

“We found these parents, who were mostly caring for children with autism and Down’s syndrome, were more stressed and had less social support had higher blood pressure than other parents,” said Stephen Gallagher of the University of Limerick in Ireland who led the study. “More importantly it was reporting of lower social support that seemed to explain the higher blood pressure in these caring parents.”

The study is the first to directly measure and compare the blood pressure of these two groups of parents, researchers said.

Gallagher and his colleagues said the findings highlight the need for better supports for caregivers.