Was Lanza’s Asperger’s Syndrome Responsible for the Massacre in Newtown?

Ever since the deaths of 28 innocent victims in a school in Newtown, Connecticut, authorities have been questioning the reasons behind the senseless slaughter – and now are linking the murderer’s actions to his diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome. Geraldine Dawson, a professor of psychiatry at North Carolina University, thinks otherwise, in saying, “Whenever there is a horrible tragedy like this one, people want to make sense out of it and they’re trying to look for answers.

I think it’s important that we be very clear that if this individual did have Asperger’s or autism, which we don’t know [for sure] that he did, this is not going to help us understand what happened. Because there really is no link between the two.” The reason for this is patients who are suffering with Asperger’s Syndrome are well aware of the rules and follow them as well. Although people diagnosed with mild to severe autism are often 20 to 30 percent more aggressive than people who aren’t, Lanza’s rampage indicates that there is something more to his reasons for committing this heinous crime.

Usually, the aggressive behavior associated with those afflicted with Asperger’s Syndrome and autism, in general, is pushing, shoving and throwing tantrums but it hardly manifests itself in the form of intentional and planned violence as Lanza showed before he killed himself and the others in the shootings. Many of his classmates said that Lanza, despite being awkward socially and a loner, was a smart kid. Autism experts are saying that there is no such link between such violent actions and Asperger’s Syndrome, and people shouldn’t be quick to judge why Lanza did what he did.