It came as
no surprise to me that many people involved in high profile mass shootings
suffer from mild autism (Asperger’s).
What did surprise me was that so many people with TBI (Traumatic Brain
Injury) also commit such crimes. Indeed
in a recent study (see later) of 239 killers, 28% appear to have autism and 21%
suffered from TBI.
Indeed the name
used by the Austrian, Hans Asperger, in 1943 for his newly identified condition
was “Autistic Psychopathy”, it was only many decades later when his work was
discovered for the English-speaking world by Lorna Wing in 1981, that the
condition became known as Asperger’s.
Wing did not like the term “Autistic Psychopathy” that Asperger had
chosen, because she thought it would apply sociopathic (violent) behaviour to
the lay public.
Wing
recently passed away and the New York Times wrote a nice article about her.
Her paper,
that first established Asperger’s syndrome, is here:-
Since this
paper was published only in 1981, it is hardly surprising that so few older
adults have been diagnosed with Asperger’s.
Indeed it was a full ten years later, in 1991, that an
authoritative English translation of Asperger's work was made by Uta Frith; before
that Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) remained virtually unknown.
As we have noted before, Psychiatrists and Psychologists
like to take their time; no Space Race or Manhattan Project in their little
world. Still, half a century is pretty
slow.
People suggesting an autism “epidemic” might take note
that only 25 years ago, absolutely nobody bothered to diagnose mild cases of
autism, they did not even have a word for it.
Those of you still wondering why your doctor still knows so little about
autism, might also take note.
Now I understand why there were no Aspies in my school,
when I was a child. They had not been
invented. I had assumed that Asperger’s
syndrome was of the same era as the man himself, but Hans Asperger died in 1980.
I had no idea it took Psychiatrists, Psychologists, and
yes, Doctors, half a century to absorb, accept, and begin to act on a new idea; all because Asperger spoke/wrote in that
“extremely rare” German language.
Incidentally, 50 million Americans claim German ancestry, not to mention
that the British royal family is actually German; the
House of Windsor is really the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, before some
image building took place in 1917 during WW1.
So don’t raise your expectations of these people too
high, for the next half century.
Hopefully they have figured out Google Translate.
Here is the Pediatrician, Professor Hans Asperger at work
in Austria; nice drawing on the black board:-
Asperger’s (Autistic Psychopathy) and TBI among Mass Murderers
In the
recent study of 239 mass murderers almost 50% had either ASD or head injury /TBI, the other
half suffered from “psychological stresses”.
At least the author has clearly read about Hans Asperger, he suggests a new diagnosis, Criminal Autistic Psychopathy, as a subcategory of Asperger's syndrome.
I will not
dwell on the murder angle, other than to say that perhaps if people with Asperger’s
were actively included at school, they would ultimately lead happier and more
successful lives. The percentage that currently
go on to have very violent thoughts, might not then do so, and the tiny
percentage of those might not act on those very thoughts.
I should
point out that I do not find it odd at all that the boy with Asperger’s in my
elder son’s class keeps telling him “I will kill you and your parents”, to
which Ted, now 14, says “but I won’t let
you” and the response is “but I will wait until you are not there”. I am not seriously worried that he will do
this, but if I was his parent, I would be very concerned that he says/thinks
such things.
Fortunately
there are no serial killers with Classic Autism, so no need to lock up Ted’s
brother.
ASD, TBI & PTSD
We have come
across TBI several times in this blog, and I note that many people coming to
this blog are TBI sufferers.
Both ASD and
TBI are associated various degrees of mood disorder. These feelings are driven by neurological changes
that are usually ignored, or treated rather crudely with drugs that rarely seem
to work entirely as intended.
I think the
world of autism could learn much from the mood disorders that follow TBI.
Epilepsy
occurs very frequently in both ASD and TBI.
The third
condition that we might usefully consider is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD). This condition is also
associated with severely affected mood.
Army veterans returning from recent conflicts can be greatly affected by
PTSD. We came across the military type
of PTSD in the post about the hormone TRH.
One of the many roles of TRH in the body seems to be linked to mood, and
very specifically suicide. The US
military is funding development of a TRH nasal spray to reduce the incidence of
suicide. They cannot give
antidepressants, like Prozac, because a well-known side effect is suicidal
thought. TRH is included in my autism
PolyPill.
People with
Asperger’s do have an elevated risk of suicide, another reason to sniff some
TRH, perhaps?
The Link between ASD, TBI and PTSD
The above
conditions are very different, but they share some similar symptoms relating to
mood disorders. By understanding the
neurological underpinnings of the mood disorder in one condition, we might well
learn something useful for the others.
The research
into TBI seems to focus on better surviving the first few hours. We saw in earlier posts that by giving intravenously
either statins, or the female hormone progesterone, in the Emergency Room,
there was a marked increase in survivability.
Progesterone and statins are both highly neuroprotective.
When Michael Schumacher had his TBI in a recent skiing accident, I was saying to myself
“give him progesterone”, I very much doubt the French neurologists did. They probably do not read American/English
research.
In the case
of autism, very recent research has shown an excess of male hormones in the
amniotic fluid of mothers who give birth to a baby that will later be diagnosed
with autism. We also have seen how some
people with mild autism treat themselves with progesterone to feel better.
Many years
ago pregnant women were often prescribed progesterone and/or estrogen, now it
seems to be limited to some women undergoing infertility treatment. Perhaps giving progesterone might reduce the
incidence of autism?
Statins are a
known treatment for cytokine storms and are included in my autism PolyPill.
Once back
home, people recovering from TBI and PTSD do seem to face similar treatment to
adults with autism; they get ignored.
Due to all
the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, we do hear quite frequently about
the consequences of untreated PTSD.
There are also very many cases of TBI, resulting from motor vehicle
accidents (cars, bikes, quad bikes etc), sports accidents (skiing) and shootings
(particularly in the US). It seems that
in many cases there can outwardly be a physical recovery, but personality has
altered. As we have seen in this blog,
all the various hormones and neurotransmitters are interrelated and so any
neurological damage will have multiple knock-on effects. This will consequently transform, for better
or worse, someone’s personality. I used
to know a person once, who was about to marry for the third time. The second wife had been hit by a bus while
crossing the street, and I remember how odd it sounded what he said next, “when
she got better, she was a different person and I had to divorce her”. The change in personality makes perfect
sense, we are all the result of the particular homeostasis our brains settled
at. So some people are gregarious,
others are loners, and a very small number become psychopaths.
If we more fully
understood how the brain works, most types of mood disorder would likely be
treatable. Since people with TBI and
mild autism are now easily identifiable, there is yet another reason to
accelerate this research. A frequent
justification for the low expenditure on autism research is that “you don’t die
from autism”. Well, the above research
shows that plenty of people do die from autism, just not the ones you expected.
Just to give
the full picture, sadly people with severer types of autism have substantially
elevated risk of mortality in their early years, due to seizures, drowning and
other accidents. There is research
showing this, but it also shows up any time you see cause of death on the
samples from brain tissue banks, used in autism studies. This is why it is very important to teach
people with severer autism to be confident swimmers, however hard it might
seem.