I saw it all..
It was essentially about a young woman, Lisa Ainscow, who drove her parents to suicide because of her behavior (her mother survived but her father died by drowning).
Lisa was emotionally crewel and obsessed with buying shoes (she had nearly 2,000 pairs). Her parents were so afraid of her that they lived downstairs at home, mostly in the Kitchen. Lisa was extremely controlling and verbally violent, she would not allow her parents to live upstairs.
She forced her father to steal money (several thousand pounds) from a Post Office where he worked so to fuel her spending obsession on shoes and fashion items. He was sent to prison, but when they found out that it was his daughters metal problems that caused him to steal, he was immediately released from prison.
I suspect that the father and maybe the mother were mild AS themselves- they were very quite and did not ask for help and were easily bullied by their daughter. In my capacity of running an AS support group I have met several people who say that had parents who also had AS. If more then one person in a family has AA, it can compound family strife and problems.
Lisa was sectiond (the police took her way). She was diagnosed with atypical-Asperser’s Syndrome or less likely, “complex personality disorder”.
There was a news report on News Night the week before about the Drama, that talked about how negatively the program portrayed Asperger’s Syndrome. I think that they interviewed people with AS (I only saw the last couple of second of the report).
AS is a relatively new diagnosis and the general public is now forming a stereotypical idea of what AS is. In that US, the stereotypical idea is that AS is a high IQ (gifted/savant) male child of middle class parents who has poor social skills. But in the UK there is a danger that, especially following programs like this, that the general public in the UK will form a dangerous opinion that Asperger’s is universally severe and that people with it are dangerous etc.
Sadly seems that a minority group is all too often unfairly characterized by its most extreme and unusual cases, they make better entertainment.
...Oh, and buy the way.
I liked the drama. It was very well acted. It is just a bit of a pity, but not unexpected, that a drama would show the negative aspect of AS. It showed reality.
30 Oct 2006, 4:50 pm
