murderers and asd

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so I have been reading here users saying that it is common for murderers and serial killers to have asd traits. I got interested and wanted to know what is your opinion, what you know about that and if you have any source.

I found these ...

Traits:
- They were frequently bullied or socially isolated as children or adolescents.
- Often, they have trouble staying employed and tend to work in menial jobs.

source, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_killer

That study... Yeah, it's bad science, or bad journalism, depending on whether it's the researcher or the reporter who made the leap from "people say you have autism" to "you actually have autism".

What they did was look at news articles about serial killers and mass murderers. Then they checked to see which ones the press had speculated about having ASD traits. About a quarter had had a newspaper reporter make that assumption about them. Only one, Adam Lanza, had a pre-existing ASD diagnosis.

So, the only conclusion you can draw is, "journalists like to say that mass murderers and serial killers have autism."

In reality, autistic people can become murderers, but we are not more likely to become murderers than NTs are. If you take the whole population of people with autism, and check to see who commits crimes, there's no increased crime rate among autistics.

Here's such a study:
Pervasive developmental disorders and criminal behaviour: a case control study.

I would doubt there is a real link. To the contrary it has been often stated by the mental health profession there is no statistical increase in likeliness of people with ASD committing violence but there is more likeliness of them to be victims of abuse/violence.

There are a large array of mental conditions (and personality types) of which ASD is just one. Many ASD tendencies are not unique and are shared by or resemble other conditions/symptoms. For instance there are many things that might make a person 'the quiet type'.

Those similiarities are unfortunate I think, as it adds to the already exsisting stigma. Like we needed any more. ASD folks are not the ones you have to worry about.

Well, most serial killers are sociopaths in one way or another, so yeah, the traits that are common to sociopaths and people with ASDs would be found in both groups--like you said, flat affect and lack of empathy.

But--how many times have I said this?--lack of empathy doesn't mean lack of compassion. A person with autism might have no clue how someone else is feeling, but they do care, and once they know, they'll take it into account. A sociopath, on the other hand, might know or not care enough to find out, but whether they know or not, won't care about others' feelings beyond whatever impact those feelings might have on them. It's a very different sort of "lack of empathy". If emotion were color, autistics would be color-blind art lovers, and sociopaths would be people who think art is a waste of time unless it makes you money.

According to various media, Elliot Rodgers, the Santa Barbara shooter is a diagnosed "aspie".

Link below.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/killed-mass-mu ... d=23853918

Since it seems to be my horrific destiny to become a mass murderer, I may as well accept it since there is one group of people I absolutely hate and have suffered needlessly because of them: psychiatrists. For years before my diagnosis they pushed their pills on me, and my low tolerance to the side effects made my life more of a living hell than any supposed mood or behavior dysfunction they thought I had. I could not eat or sleep, I could not concentrate on anything, I developed severe restless leg syndrome where I'd spend hours pacing and pacing until my legs cramped and then I'd try to sit down but I couldn't get any relief at all. They are nothing but disgusting pill-pushing quacks and they should be sued for what they made me go through but of course that will never happen. So I have no choice but to make them suffer the way I did but even worse by kidnapping them, tying them up and forcing the very poison they push down their throats and make them endure all the horrible side effects they made me go through. They lied to me, saying I wouldn't have side effects or that they would eventually go away on their own. People I thought were trustworthy who lie to me do not deserve to exist in this world. Of course when they finally die from overdosing I will have to find a way to burn their bodies until a trace isn't left...

Well, just because I thought about something like that doesn't mean I'd actually do it... like the fantasies I've had about tricking all the other kids who made my life miserable at my school into eating cafeteria food laced with syrup of ipecac. And they thought it made them sick before!

Serial killers are psychopaths. This has nothing to do with AS. Psychopaths lack empathy for others and use them objects for their own, personal pleasure. Look at two of the most well known serial killers: Ted Bundy and John Gacy. Both were very NT and it was because of this that they were able to lure their victims to their deaths. I really can't see most people on the spectrum even having the ability to become serial killers unless maybe they choose homless people and prostitutes as victims.Even then, an aspie is likely to crack wgen questioned by the cops.