The news from Connecticut hit me and, I'm imagining, most of you pretty hard this weekend. So much loss...so much violence. The media will be debating gun control and criminal prevention with vigor for a good while I'm sure. A coworker asked me what I thought about it... his son has aspergers and violent outbursts. My coworker takes antidepressants to offset the constant feeling of helplessness and despair over his son's future. He fully expects his son to commit a crime at worst, and live permanently off the state at best. It doesn't help him to know that my roommate, also with asperger's, is living off the state as well.
I wish there was something I could do. My roommate is respectful and looks out for my home, my pets, and even me, but her habits are depressing to me. I wish I could force her to leave the house. I wish she would watch something other than cartoons on Netflix. Or volunteer someplace to get socialized and work through her anxiety. Or keep up with current events. I don’t know what she does on the internet all day, and frankly I don’t want to know. I realize these are my values and not hers, but it distresses me.
There are plenty of examples of sucessful people with mental illness, but outliers like this breed a sort of watchful unease. The law itself adds to this by falling on the side of criminal justice, but not criminal prevention. There’s no requirement for therapy, or socialization activities, or being tracked. Or for goodness sakes keeping firearms out of the damn house. Once 18 is reached, they can walk away and become homeless, or worse, and the law does nothing to stop them, or heal them.
I don’t know if there should be a legal precedent for keeping tabs on the mentally ill or not. On one side, these sorts of events need a response. On the other, personal recognizance, privacy and recovery needs respect. I care about people with mental illness. I care about my roommate. But I don’t want to be a victim either. There must be balance, somewhere.
This is an article I read about a woman raising a violent son… a well written cry for help, and change.
http://gawker.com/5968818/i-am-adam-lanzas-mother
I want to give Beth (Hughes) Campbell the link to your blogsite... several weeks ago, Geoff's son Cuyler, who has been diagnosed with Aspergers, but who sounds much like Liza Long's son, went postal over being asked to put down the laptop and go to bed... he hit both Geoff and Beth, than ran out into the night... and now he claims he was the victim, that they "punched him in the head". Fortunately the police saw everyone that evening, know there was no sign of Cuy being struck. Beth's doctor documented the large bruise on her chest.
ReplyDeleteI also have a moving paragraph by my friend Carol Kaplan who's brother terrorized her home when they were kids, and who probably killed their mother by beating her. I'll send you that link if I can find it.
Thank you for focusing on the most important issue in all these tragedies.
Hi Kate, please do! She may already have it but I haven't posted in a long while. The story you tell sounds sadly familiar... and there are many books and resources now that help explain why these tantrums occur, but sadly not always how to avoid them. I actually just picked up my roommate a copy of the book "All Cats Have Asperger's". It's sweet, sad, funny and moving, told through photos of cats. I also picked up the counterpart, "All Dogs Have ADHD", which I knew already. :)
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