“I feel backed into a corner and I have to attack or get away. I can’t think about anything else,” Michael said. “It’s kind of like a werewolf. When a werewolf turns into a werewolf, it doesn’t know who he is, it doesn’t know where he is, it just wants to hurt and fight people. You can’t control yourself when you’re like that, and no one else can.”
The list of diagnoses reads like a catalog: sensory integration disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, intermittent explosive disorder, ADHD, anxiety, depression, autistic spectrum disorder, juvenile bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and dysgraphia.
The list of medications prescribed during his short thirteen-year life are equally troubling: Abilify, risperdone, clonidine, trazodone, Concerta, Ritalin, Daytrana patch, Celexa, guanfacine, Zyprexa, and currently Intuniv, Wellbutrin, lithium, and Trileptal. He sees a psychiatrist, an occupational therapist, a psychologist, has psychosocial rehabilitation once a week, and has a Department of Health and Welfare caseworker.
“For mothers of special needs children, the quest to find proper treatment can become all consuming,” Long said. She has good health insurance, but because of her son’s therapeutic care, medications, and babysitting costs, she typically spends one-third of her paycheck on Michael’s needs.
Still, Long is counting her blessings, knowing that despite the problems she has with her son, there are others who have it much worse. “I have it easy compared to some other parents I know whose kids are suffering from mental illness. My son isn’t burning things or killing animals.”
Nancy Lanza spent the years when her son Adam was between nine and seventeen consumed by the search to help cure his affliction. As a young child Adam was in a constant state of struggle with the world around him. At the age of five, Adam Lanza was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, and shortly afterward, a second condition, sensory processing disorder.
As Adam got older, he struggled to fit in and couldn’t relate to his peers, and as his condition worsened, he made the decision to spend less time in the outside world and instead sought comfort in the delusional fantasy world of violence and death he had created in his own mind. By the time Adam was nineteen, he had withdrawn almost completely and become a virtual shut-in, spending hours playing the first-person shooter game Call of Duty. In the months that preceded the shooting, Adam began to isolate himself in his bedroom, surrounded all day and all night by violent images.
Nancy Lanza had the financial resources to see any doctor in the state, but by 2008 she told a friend that finding adequate treatment for her son had become “a lost cause.”
“He’s so bright, but no one is willing to give him the time and attention he deserves,” she frequently told a family member.
Marianne Kristiansson, a professor of forensic psychiatry at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, published a recent study looking at the characteristics of violent offenders who also had autism. Kristiansson pointed out that the vast majority of those with autism are law-abiding citizens who will never commit any crimes but, out of the small sample of mass killers she looked at, a higher representation of autism was found to be prevalent. Based on her knowledge of what is publicly known about Adam Lanza, she believes it was his inability to express his frustrations that ultimately led to the massacre.
“The behavior of Adam Lanza was quite typical of a subject with autism,” said Kristiansson. “This behavior is impossible to understand because it’s so horrible. The motive is different from what you would normally see in a criminal. You want to communicate on a very global level that people have treated you in a very bad way and you want revenge.
“Many of the offenders we have looked at wanted to communicate to other authorities that they are very offended and very frustrated, but due to their autistic traits, they didn’t have the ability to communicate that verbally, so instead they acted out in these bizarre and odd ways.”
After studying Peter Mangs, a forty-year-old with a diagnosis of Asperger’s who was charged with shooting more than a dozen people from 2009 to 2010, Kristiansson found that it was his inability to communicate his dissatisfaction with society that ultimately drove him to kill. “I’m quite sure that Adam Lanza was offended by the school, his community, his mother, and others but he wasn’t able to verbalize this dissatisfaction,” said Kristiansson. “Part of autistic traits is that people like Adam can’t think about how other people might feel, they can only think from their own perspective, so it all became about him making a statement saying that he was extremely offended by the school and wanted revenge.”
Still, most in the medical community believe there is no link between autism and acts of violence and that the accusations further damage an already stigmatized and targeted group of people. Most autism groups dispute the science that links autism to violence. Most believe the studies are flawed and cite studies of their own that show there is no link.
“There is absolutely no evidence or any reliable research that suggests a linkage between autism and planned violence,” the Autism Society said in a statement. “To imply or suggest that some linkage exists is wrong and is harmful to more than 1.5 million law-abiding, nonviolent, and wonderful individuals who live with autism each day.”
Many children with autism already face enough societal challenges without being linked to mass shootings, according to Peter Bell of Autism Speaks. “Autism did not commit this horrible act. A man did,” said Bell, executive vice president for programs and services for the advocacy and research group. “We are an evidence-based organization and when you look at the scientific literature there really is no connection between autism and acts of violence,” explained Bell, who is also the father of a son with autism. “In fact, we find evidence that supports the fact that they are usually the victims.
“We were saddened to see the media jump on the idea that this was Asperger’s. There were a number of autistic victims involved in this tragedy and because of that we’ve been impacted emotionally.”
Bell believes that there is also a misperception that those with autism don’t feel empathy. “They are highly empathic and the research supports that,” says Bell.
Nicole Hockley, whose autistic son Dylan was one of the victims in the shooting, bristles at any suggestion that links her son’s condition with violence. “It’s highly offensive and damaging to link autism and violence and it isn’t backed up by science,” Hockley said.
“We are talking about some of the most caring, compassionate people you would ever meet. He was very empathic. He loved to laugh and be tickled. Dylan was just so pure and full of love.”
Still, the medical community remains divided.
“The mental health community is extremely sensitive about linking violence with autism; many refuse to make the link but the facts tell a different story,” said Dr. Edward Shorter, a professor of the history of medicine and psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Toronto who has published numerous books on the subject. “Autistic children often have trouble understanding the normal rules of society. They don’t understand the proper way to behave in social settings and can tend to seek isolation,” Dr. Shorter said. “This can lead to violent behavior.”
Liza Long says she draws on her own personal experience and that “countless” emails of support from other struggling parents of autistic kids are proof that a problem exists. “The violent behavior is the elephant in the room with the autism community. How do we begin to fix it if we can’t even acknowledge it?
“To say that the potential of violence isn’t a factor with autistic kids just isn’t true. We are talking about a community of very unique people who see the world in a different way from the rest of us and have different triggers.”
In many ways Liza Long’s obstacles with her son have mirrored Nancy Lanza’s plight with Adam. For Michael, it appeared that one big behavioral turning point came when trying to make the transition from elementary school to middle school, where he couldn’t adjust to cha
nging classes, becoming overwhelmed by the sounds and lights. Adam had similar struggles with the transition.
“For someone like my son, from a sensory integration standpoint, there couldn’t be a worse place for him. The large fluorescent lights are always on. It was never quiet. It could literally put him right in a state of psychosis,” Long said.
Michael is also prone to becoming easily fixated, but fortunately for Long her son obsesses over stuffed animals and Greek mythology, not violent video games and firearms. Because of her own experience, Liza Long shudders when she sees the news reports of only twenty-six victims, believing that Adam Lanza was a victim of his mental illness and of a society that hasn’t given the proper attention and tools to appropriately deal with it.
“It is obvious just by looking at pictures of Adam that he wasn’t getting the proper treatment,” Long added. “Adam was absolutely responsible for his actions, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a victim.
“Adam Lanza was a mentally ill man who did an evil act, then committed suicide. Adam is a victim of not having the access to the resources to get him the proper treatment. He’s a victim of his parents’ crumbling marriage, which is hell on earth for special needs children.
“Adam Lanza is the twenty-eighth victim.”
In the days immediately following the tragedy in Sandy Hook, news reporters from around the country began scouring the town for any morsel of information they could find from former friends or classmates who knew Adam Lanza. “I knew of him, but I didn’t know him,” was the common refrain from young men who were about Adam’s age.
When seemingly everyone was connected through social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter, it seemed impossible that anyone could hide so completely, especially after having lived in the same small town of 27,000. Adam Lanza managed to become the closest thing to anonymous anyone could find in a tight-knit community such as Newtown. The Lanza home rarely had visitors. Within Nancy’s small pocket of friends, only a few had been inside her house over the past two years. Adam would go several weeks at a time without leaving the house or talking to another human being other than his mother. Few noticed. Those who did chalked it up to his “strangeness.”
When Nicole Hockley, whose son Dylan died in the Sandy Hook shooting, spoke at a community safety meeting, she told the audience that even before the shooting occurred, the Lanza home was the only one that wasn’t completely part of the community—“a black spot in the neighborhood.”
“No one spoke about them. I’ve never heard a neighbor speak of them. Perhaps if there was more engagement within a community with neighbors looking out for each other, supporting each other, then maybe they would have gotten help in a different sort of way. But to know everyone on your street except for one house, and that happens to be a house with people that—or a person who does this—that’s kind of hard to swallow. So there is some regret there.”
Of the few people aware that Nancy Lanza’s son was troubled, most of them assumed that she was dealing with it. Outwardly, Nancy rarely talked about or displayed the kind of internal stress she was experiencing with her son.
“Nancy always put on a happy face. She wasn’t the kind of person who felt comfortable talking about her personal problems or complaining,” said one relative. “We knew she was having problems with Adam not wanting to leave the house, but no one knew to what extent.”
John Cacioppo, a social psychologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois, has researched the effects of isolation on the human mind and believes severe cases can cause several potentially unhealthy changes in perception that can ultimately lead to violence. “Isolation isn’t at all what people thought it was, and it’s a lot more important than people thought it was,” Cacioppo says. “No matter what social species you’re talking about, all the way down to fruit flies, if you isolate them they die earlier. It lowers your impulse control and essentially triggers a self-preservation mind-set. A lonely person’s brain is always on the lookout for social threats.”
If a social person sees someone else in trouble, they are more likely to help because they feel empathy, but if a lonely person sees someone else in trouble it triggers a self-preservation instinct because they don’t have anyone to take care of them, according to Cacioppo. He noted that lonely people show heightened focus on negative thoughts and perceptions. They also tend to find greater fault with themselves and those around them; they expect others to be less friendly, less kind. They’re bracing against “social threats,” but those expectations have a way of fulfilling themselves, Cacioppo says. In the negative-feedback loop of chronic loneliness, self-protection turns out to be self-defeat.
The effect can be even worse for isolated people who seek comfort on the Internet. People who use the Internet to generate or enhance in-person relationships can benefit, while those who use online connections as a substitute for face-to-face ones become lonelier and more depressed. “Isolated people can become fixated on their immediate environment. If that environment is guns and violence, it has the potential to lead to problems,” Cacioppo said.
For up to fourteen hours a day, Adam sat alone in his windowless basement playing violent video games in the months leading up to the savage shooting. Sometimes he dressed from head to toe in a military uniform like the character in the game as he shot at paper targets with a pellet gun.
“He is like a zombie in front of the screen,” Nancy Lanza complained just two weeks before she was found murdered in her bed.
Many wanted to blame the video games. The tragedy at Sandy Hook wasn’t the first time the graphic gore-filled war games had been linked to a mass shooting. Norwegian murderer Anders Behring Breivik credited the game Call of Duty with having helped him in his preparations before his killing spree. World of Warcraft, a violent fantasy game, was reportedly one of the video games that James Holmes, the suspect in the Aurora movie theater shooting, frequently played. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on their shooting rampage at Columbine High School after their parents took away their video game privileges.
Psychologists have voiced concerns that spending prolonged amounts of time surrounded by violent images can blur the line between fiction and reality, possibly leading to devastating consequences. “When we hand a child a controller and put them in the position of controlling a gun and repeatedly making it shoot human beings, we are desensitizing them to real world violence and making them less empathetic to suffering,” explained Joanne Cantor, an expert on the psychological effects of media and a professor emerita at the University of Madison, Wisconsin.
Not surprisingly, younger children are most at risk of being influenced by America’s addiction to violence. Imagery we see when we’re younger than thirteen leaves a particularly lasting imprint, and children under five are almost completely unable to differentiate fiction from reality, according to Cantor.
Today’s sheer amount of blood and gore in the gaming industry is unprecedented in modern history, experts say. Still, the causes of violence are complex and cannot be simplified by concluding that exposure to violent images alone is the driving reason behind the recent spate of mass shootings.
“There is no evidence that a single violent crime has come from a video game,” said Cheryl K. Olson, a public health researcher and coauthor of Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do. “If you look at someone like Adam Lanza, who isolated himself for hours at a time in front of these games, it is clear that it can create a violent situation, but that’s true if you sit in front of anything for too long in isolation.”
Olson’s research showed that an average child in seventh and eighth grade plays at least one violent video game on a regular basis; meanwhile, as the trend of violent video games increases, violent crimes as a whole have decreased. It appears that for normal healthy kids, violent video games have no correlation with real-world violence. On the whole, these well-balanced children have a surprisingly good understanding of the differe
nce between fantasy and reality, according to Olson.
“In a video game they know it is violence and can act out that violence in a fantasy world, but there is no evidence that video games cause a desensitization to real-world violence,” she explained. “The real abnormal part was how he cut himself off from other people, not that he played violent video games.”
A pattern has emerged in the recent mass killings in Connecticut, Colorado, Norway, and elsewhere, when young men whose social isolation borders on autism become prey to psychotic ideation and, under its influence, commit acts of horrible violence.
“We have created a recipe for a time bomb and Adam Lanza is right in the middle of that pot,” says Dr. Edward Shorter. “Autism and psychosis are two separate illnesses, but they can come together in today’s ultraviolent culture in a horrible way.”
This represents a large cultural shift that began in the 1960s, reflecting the increasing power of violent images that pervade everyday life on the minds of disturbed young men. While overall violent crimes are trending downward, mass shootings are becoming more common. Six of the twelve deadliest shootings to take place in American history have happened in the last six years.
“Young men suffering from delusions a hundred years ago were often more fixated on a perceived slight from a boss at work or their mother,” says Shorter. “Today young men with delusional thinking are filled with violent ideas from culture and video games and have the ability to surround themselves with guns and death in a way that is unprecedented in all of history.
“The more someone with Adam’s symptoms immerses himself in the world of these superviolent video games, the more they lose context with reality and are prone to act in these violent ways.”
Newtown: An American Tragedy Page 18