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Autistic Teenager Killed Himself

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Sweetleaf
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22 Apr 2012, 2:16 pm

Asp-Z wrote:
I never said you did, chill :P


I thought I was pretty chill....but now I'm kinda flustered as I hate things like people telling me to calm down, when I'm already bloody calm. :lol: but don't worry about it I doubt you meant any harm.


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Sweetleaf
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22 Apr 2012, 2:22 pm

Asp-Z wrote:
PastFixations wrote:
He was a HFA, not an Aspie.


Same thing.

Quote:
Even so the points are valid whether or not his disorder caused him to do this alongside the abuse he recieved.


I'm just making a general point about the media and their coverage of such stories. They always give autism or Asperger's a mention when someone who has either gets bullied to the point where they kill themselves but this happens a lot to people without autism as well and it's just not an important detail to the story. It gives autism as a whole an even worse name, which is not a good thing.

Autism on its own does not cause people to commit suicide, bullies (who should be thrown in jail for life) and depression caused by the bullies (and perhaps other factors) is what makes people commit suicide.


I actually think it is kind of an important part of the story since many people with aspergers suffer from bullying...and co-morbids like depression and anxiety. So it does have its role regardless of how small that role is. I mean maybe if he didn't have AS he would not have been bullied....I am sure if I was normal I wouldn't have been bullied. But yeah it is important that he had AS.....how does someone killing them-self because they could not take the abuse anymore give autism a bad name? To me it gives those committing the abuse a bad name for driving someone who already had difficulties(depression, anxiety and AS) to that point a bad name.

So no autism does not cause suicide...but it can make one come off as different which sadly seems to attract bullies, but it is more the bullying, depression, anxiety and that sort of thing that causes the suicide, but being different for whatever f**** up reason seems to attract jerks.


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ShadesOfMe
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22 Apr 2012, 8:05 pm

Very sad. For some people, this is just a way to end it all. They might think that the suffering their family will go through is nothing compared to what they have. But in reality that is not true.



cyberdad
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22 Apr 2012, 8:32 pm

Sweetleaf wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
Sweetleaf wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
Sweetleaf wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
Keyman wrote:
I hope someone sets up a bullies hall of shame photo gallery .. :twisted:
And give the school bad reputation.


This is an ongoing issue in schools here in Australia. The victims of bullying are pretty much anyone who doesn't quite fit in with the in-crowd.

The stereotype that bullies are only kids from the poor side of town who get beaten up by their drunken father and take out their frustrations on other kids is not representative of reality. My experience in a private college was that most of the bullying is perpetrated by the rich prefect kids (male and female) who ironically are academically bright and socially successful.

Part of the problem is western society encourages competitiveness and "winner" "loser" type cognition is nurtured in school. The underlying reasons for bullying and social ostracism that leads kids to bully to the point the victim commits suicide are far deeper than we like to admit.


Wow its weird there sometimes seems to be that sterotype here, when usually its the ones with the socially popular kids with nice home lives bullying those who have problems at home. I mean I wasn't the one bullying the kids who fit in and had successful parents and all they where the ones bullying me it was like there was a cool club and I was never invited.


Which is why when school's claim to expel bullies they haven't really fixed the underlying culture that gives rise to bullying in the first place. A school needs to have a open policy on bullying and it needs to be spelled out when kids first start school. A zero tolerance.


most 'zero tolerance' policies I've run into are in the nature of...if you retaliate to bullying you will be persecuted.

At least then you are dealing with the bullies only. Currently the private schools there is a culture that is systemic in the schools themselves. This makes it doubly hard for the victims.
Where persecution is being laid out and the school eventually wrings it;s hands you need to get legal/third parties involved and/or leave the school and launch a campaign against the school till the culprits are punished. Otherwise they get away with it.


I had teachers in on the bullying to sometimes....but yeah I just kinda tried to stay out of everyones way and try not to break rules so the teachers couldn't use rule breaking as an excuse to single me out. I never did bother with third parties, hell half the time I did not even talk to my parents about it....but such is life, at least now I don't have to go to school anymore.

This is exactly what happended to me for at least 8 years encompassing my upper primary and lower highschool. I could never talk to my parents. For me the bullying stopped in upper highschool because exam stress meant the bullies were too busy with their own problems. There were at least three teachers in my upper primary who actively tried to instigate bullying of me. It was as clear to me then.



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22 Apr 2012, 8:35 pm

ShadesOfMe wrote:
Very sad. For some people, this is just a way to end it all. They might think that the suffering their family will go through is nothing compared to what they have. But in reality that is not true.


Maybe the suffering their family will go through is not 'nothing' compared to the suffering they are going through...but It cannot be said its necessarily as bad or worse in all cases either. but then it's not really a competition about who's suffering is worse...its mostly sad people get driven to such a point, that they attempt/commit suicide.


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22 Apr 2012, 8:39 pm

Asp-Z wrote:
I'm just making a general point about the media and their coverage of such stories. They always give autism or Asperger's a mention when someone who has either gets bullied to the point where they kill themselves but this happens a lot to people without autism as well and it's just not an important detail to the story. It gives autism as a whole an even worse name, which is not a good thing.

Autism on its own does not cause people to commit suicide, bullies (who should be thrown in jail for life) and depression caused by the bullies (and perhaps other factors) is what makes people commit suicide.


Exactly, I am aware in legal circles there is a general rule of thumb that autistic individuals are more likely to commit crime because they lack empathy
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? ... id=1810117

This unfortunately make crime committed by autistics and aspergers a newsworthy story. It give autism a bad name in the public eye.

On the matter of suicide, even if the boy was taking anti-depressants, the trigger was the bullying, not the drugs.



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22 Apr 2012, 8:44 pm

cyberdad wrote:
Asp-Z wrote:
I'm just making a general point about the media and their coverage of such stories. They always give autism or Asperger's a mention when someone who has either gets bullied to the point where they kill themselves but this happens a lot to people without autism as well and it's just not an important detail to the story. It gives autism as a whole an even worse name, which is not a good thing.

Autism on its own does not cause people to commit suicide, bullies (who should be thrown in jail for life) and depression caused by the bullies (and perhaps other factors) is what makes people commit suicide.


Exactly, I am aware in legal circles there is a general rule of thumb that autistic individuals are more likely to commit crime because they lack empathy
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? ... id=1810117

This unfortunately make crime committed by autistics and aspergers a newsworthy story. It give autism a bad name in the public eye.

On the matter of suicide, even if the boy was taking anti-depressants, the trigger was the bullying, not the drugs.


Well depending on how the anti-depressants effected him they could have contributed...I had a bad reaction to SSRIs so I'd believe others could have negative experiences with them to.


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22 Apr 2012, 9:20 pm

Sweetleaf wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
Asp-Z wrote:
I'm just making a general point about the media and their coverage of such stories. They always give autism or Asperger's a mention when someone who has either gets bullied to the point where they kill themselves but this happens a lot to people without autism as well and it's just not an important detail to the story. It gives autism as a whole an even worse name, which is not a good thing.

Autism on its own does not cause people to commit suicide, bullies (who should be thrown in jail for life) and depression caused by the bullies (and perhaps other factors) is what makes people commit suicide.


Exactly, I am aware in legal circles there is a general rule of thumb that autistic individuals are more likely to commit crime because they lack empathy
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? ... id=1810117

This unfortunately make crime committed by autistics and aspergers a newsworthy story. It give autism a bad name in the public eye.

On the matter of suicide, even if the boy was taking anti-depressants, the trigger was the bullying, not the drugs.


Well depending on how the anti-depressants effected him they could have contributed...I had a bad reaction to SSRIs so I'd believe others could have negative experiences with them to.

What I'm saying is the SSRIs make certain people more predisposed to suicidal thoughts if they are confronted by specific triggers like bullying.



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23 Apr 2012, 3:43 am

Bullies deserve to burn in hell. I don't care what anyone thinks of me for saying this.

People don't kill themselves out of selfishness, they kill themselves because they are in pain. People who kill themselves truly believe that others will be better off without them (even though they are completely wrong, and it's really the bullies everyone would be better off without)



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23 Apr 2012, 4:09 am

heavenlyabyss wrote:
Bullies deserve to burn in hell. I don't care what anyone thinks of me for saying this.

Well, my only disagreements would be philosophical - ie. a hell for people to be cast into makes no sense and while I've been forced back into mind/body dualism - even with a soul there's still no difference between the environment and how people treat each other. When I think about the people who bullied me as a kid though I get sick at the thought of them apologizing to me when if it had been a different school it would have simply been the same stuff different faces and, by society's standards, I brought in on myself for being weak. For people to feel bad about it after the fact, whether in one of our cases or, in a real tragic sense - this case, means that no one learned anything though - ie. they moralized it and the more they moralize it the more they make the situation impervious to improvement.


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23 Apr 2012, 8:28 am

Sweetleaf wrote:
I actually think it is kind of an important part of the story since many people with aspergers suffer from bullying...and co-morbids like depression and anxiety. So it does have its role regardless of how small that role is. I mean maybe if he didn't have AS he would not have been bullied....I am sure if I was normal I wouldn't have been bullied. But yeah it is important that he had AS.....how does someone killing them-self because they could not take the abuse anymore give autism a bad name? To me it gives those committing the abuse a bad name for driving someone who already had difficulties(depression, anxiety and AS) to that point a bad name.

So no autism does not cause suicide...but it can make one come off as different which sadly seems to attract bullies, but it is more the bullying, depression, anxiety and that sort of thing that causes the suicide, but being different for whatever f**** up reason seems to attract jerks.


You can't say that with any level of certainty. Bullies look for any excuse to make someone a victim, and if it wasn't the Asperger's it could very well have been something else. People get bullied over things as stupid as their hair colour, it doesn't take much of a real "reason" for it to happen.



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23 Apr 2012, 8:32 am

cyberdad wrote:
Sweetleaf wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
Asp-Z wrote:
I'm just making a general point about the media and their coverage of such stories. They always give autism or Asperger's a mention when someone who has either gets bullied to the point where they kill themselves but this happens a lot to people without autism as well and it's just not an important detail to the story. It gives autism as a whole an even worse name, which is not a good thing.

Autism on its own does not cause people to commit suicide, bullies (who should be thrown in jail for life) and depression caused by the bullies (and perhaps other factors) is what makes people commit suicide.


Exactly, I am aware in legal circles there is a general rule of thumb that autistic individuals are more likely to commit crime because they lack empathy
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? ... id=1810117

This unfortunately make crime committed by autistics and aspergers a newsworthy story. It give autism a bad name in the public eye.

On the matter of suicide, even if the boy was taking anti-depressants, the trigger was the bullying, not the drugs.


Well depending on how the anti-depressants effected him they could have contributed...I had a bad reaction to SSRIs so I'd believe others could have negative experiences with them to.

What I'm saying is the SSRIs make certain people more predisposed to suicidal thoughts if they are confronted by specific triggers like bullying.


Yeah not sure there has to be a specific trigger for SSRI's to make things worse, there wasn't when I tried them......but I'd say the SSRI was a possible factor, the bullying was a definite factor.........and well depression can also contribute.


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23 Apr 2012, 8:34 am

From what I've read, SSRIs can increase suicidal thoughts in certain people. If this happens you should probably go to your doctor and get different meds though.



Sweetleaf
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23 Apr 2012, 8:37 am

Asp-Z wrote:
Sweetleaf wrote:
I actually think it is kind of an important part of the story since many people with aspergers suffer from bullying...and co-morbids like depression and anxiety. So it does have its role regardless of how small that role is. I mean maybe if he didn't have AS he would not have been bullied....I am sure if I was normal I wouldn't have been bullied. But yeah it is important that he had AS.....how does someone killing them-self because they could not take the abuse anymore give autism a bad name? To me it gives those committing the abuse a bad name for driving someone who already had difficulties(depression, anxiety and AS) to that point a bad name.

So no autism does not cause suicide...but it can make one come off as different which sadly seems to attract bullies, but it is more the bullying, depression, anxiety and that sort of thing that causes the suicide, but being different for whatever f**** up reason seems to attract jerks.


You can't say that with any level of certainty. Bullies look for any excuse to make someone a victim, and if it wasn't the Asperger's it could very well have been something else. People get bullied over things as stupid as their hair colour, it doesn't take much of a real "reason" for it to happen.


I can't say what with any level of certainty...that many people with aspergers suffer from bullying and co-morbids like anxiety and depression, because I actually am pretty certain that is true. I also already acknowledged that there are various reasons people bully, like I said in my case no one knew I had 'aspergers' so that was not really a factor, though it was the cause of why I was different from everyone else......but they didn't know that, they just felt it was good reason to bully me I guess regardless of the cause.

And my point that bullying should not happen still stands.


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23 Apr 2012, 8:42 am

Of course bullying shouldn't happen, that goes without saying. All I'm saying that Asperger's doesn't mean you'll certainly be bullied and not having Asperger's doesn't mean it certainly wouldn't happen.

I'm curious, do you have any source for the claim that depression is common comorbid for autism? I'm mainly asking for personal reasons really, I'm being assessed for it soon and I think it's common amongst Aspies too but I've not been able to find any solid data on it.



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23 Apr 2012, 10:05 am

Asp-Z wrote:
Of course bullying shouldn't happen, that goes without saying. All I'm saying that Asperger's doesn't mean you'll certainly be bullied and not having Asperger's doesn't mean it certainly wouldn't happen.

True.

I'm curious, do you have any source for the claim that depression is common comorbid for autism? I'm mainly asking for personal reasons really, I'm being assessed for it soon and I think it's common amongst Aspies too but I've not been able to find any solid data on it.


Well lots of people here have depression....and I've read from online sources and in both the psychology text books I used when I was still in college that anxiety and depression are common co-morbids of aspergers.


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