James Holmes may have Aspergers?
Sweetleaf
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However, "normal" people don't go on shooting sprees. Someone does something like this, they are almost certainly diagnosable with something.
Anyways this is what gave me the impression you were implying mentally ill people are more likely than 'normal' people to do something like that.
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This is similar. Yet we struggle to accept our own can become heinous murderers
In new zealand we have recently been promoting anti bullying measures [esp, regarding facebook, texting and social media]
due the the high incidence of young people committing suicide after being bullied publicly via websites
recently groups of young people [who know each other, from small towns] have been killing themselves
one by one over the space of a few months....
I sincerely hope progressive measures are implemented.
Otherwise bullycide and mass murders will become more frequent in our societies.... 'normal' 'aspie' or 'whatever'
I could not agree more because whatever was going on with this individual it is possible he suffered some kind of bullying if that is the case it could explain hid actions like he wanted to live in another world. Of course no one would say he did the right thing and no one knows if he has AS or anything else I guess as they say we will find out in time.
Verdandi
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The something I was referring to was psychopathy or sociopathy, which are not technically mental illnesses, but more a matter of personality, or at least in the case of psychopathy, a neurological issue.
Sweetleaf
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The something I was referring to was psychopathy or sociopathy, which are not technically mental illnesses, but more a matter of personality, or at least in the case of psychopathy, a neurological issue.
Those aren't nessisarily diagnosible and I have never heard either referred to as neurological issues...but maybe. But that makes more sense.
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Aspies generally don't lack empathy, that's more along the line of psychopathy. I would guess the two can be thought as similar, it's only natural for someone that doesn't fit into society, to create their own place to exist, which is often filled with things that interest them.
Verdandi
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Psychopathy is diagnosable with Robert Hare's psychopathy checklists (PCL-R, for example). Sociopathy is a somewhat vague construct that is either supposed to actually be psychopathy, or is distinguished from psychopathy in particular ways,
The neurological elements of psychopathy are discussed in this video:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnV4RnWcmWo[/youtube]
Psychopaths usually gave a ton of friends. I was involved with a cult once, the leader was a charismatic psychopathic Satanist......and also a psychopathic girlfriend who was eventually charged with criminal harassment.
I know psychopathy
Aspies who go bad..... get relabelled sociopaths... after the fact
Until the cinema shootings he was a choir boy.... and into Batman!!
Last edited by Surfman on 24 Jul 2012, 4:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
Not to derail but I do not believe that violent media is a straight shot actual violence. I watch plenty of horror movies and violent video games but you will not see me pull out a sword and saw my neighbors.
However, "normal" people don't go on shooting sprees. Someone does something like this, they are almost certainly diagnosable with something.
Anyways this is what gave me the impression you were implying mentally ill people are more likely than 'normal' people to do something like that.
General studies per the mentally ill indicate they are no more likely than the general population to be associated with violence, however there are exceptions to that general research among subgroups.
The issue has been studied specifically per rampage killings, and about half of the individuals studied were formally diagnosed mentally ill and often schizophrenic. Many were reported as receiving no treatment for their mental illnesses or were not taking their prescribed medications prior to the rampage killings.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/13/opinion/a-closer-look-at-rampage-killings.html
Cultural influences on this group, such as violent entertainment, seemed to have little impact. Instead, the most common factor was serious mental health problems. About half had received formal diagnosis of mental illness, often schizophrenia. More than half made threats, and a third had histories of violent behavior. Many never received treatment for mental disorders or were not monitored to keep them on their medication. Most of their rampage attacks were not sudden, impulsive acts but the culmination of years of rage, depression and mental illness. Often the failure of families, co-workers and even therapists to deal with warning signs led to catastrophic consequences.
Even with greater care in spotting mental disturbance, there can never be a perfect system. But the other crucial factor in rampage killings, access to guns, can be affected through legislation and regulation. More than half the killers, including those with histories of hospitalization for mental illness, were able to buy guns easily. While federal law prohibits the sale of guns to those who have been involuntarily committed to a mental institution, most states do not conduct background checks on a purchaser's psychiatric history.
The more notable recent rampage killings have been carried out by young adult males, however the research that was done prior to the year 2000 indicates that most were middle age males.
Considering that his mother was a psychiatric nurse, it's not likely that an autism spectrum disorder would have gone undetected during Holmes youth. It is pretty obvious that he is a delusional individual, by any reasonable observation, regardless of what potential diagnosis may eventually be attached to those delusions.
It's not impossible that someone like him presenting the behavior he is currently presenting would have an autism spectrum disorder, as the ICD10 acknowledges that Aspergers is associated with psychotic breaks from reality in young adulthood, in some cases.
I think it is likely that the parents may be able to contribute more information to the authorities regarding his mental health, but the general public may not ever become aware of those details, if they are not presented as part of the case. If he wasn't drugged in the courtroom today, it appeared he was not sharing the same reality with the rest of the people in that room, nor was he making any attempt to hide it.
There are some experts that have suggested that the legalization of the sale of semi-automatic weapons in the US, have had an impact in the uptick of the body count of rampage killings in the last couple of decades, but it's hard to prove cause and effect, other than more bullets provided in a shorter period of time do have the potential to injure more individuals. That's common sense. The question becomes would they have had access to illegal weapons if the legal weapons were not available. It appears Holmes was a resourceful individual. It couldn't do much more damage than hurting people's feelings, that want to purchase more, if the semi-automatic weapons were banned for sale again. Along with a reduction of federal excise taxes that are heavy on the sale of those weapons.
The Batman movie appears to have played a role as an associated factor in this incidence, but it's hard to say what an alternate reality of exposure to cultural influences would have provided as far as a different result. The research done so far does not indicate that violence in the media plays a major role in rampage killings, but it has been evidenced in some cases as an associated factor.
Research so far, provides evidence that mental illness is the largest associated factor, in rampage killings, as evidenced in my last post.
Here it is.
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