'I am Adam Lanza's Mother' ; re-thinking mental illness

I read the article yesterday and didn’t find it great. This mother couldn’t take absolutely any responsibility for her son’s behavior and how she raised him to be like that. Need I say more? To free herself of any guilt that she fucked up big time somewhere in raising him, she exaggerates her situation and has the nerve to compare her son with a 20 year old dead mass murderer. To show again how afraid she was to even raise a kid who complains like every 13 year old kid who wants to just play, she compares it with a family she knows nothing about.

A bullshit article with nothing relevant to mental illnesses, but incompetent mothers promoted by idiotic journalist.

Thanks for your attention.

an amalgamation of many factors made this perfect storm,
this is a failure of humanity orchestrating a practice known as civilization.
the degrees of responsibility ARE proportional to the proximity of the perpetration,
but the system failed as a whole to catch this anomaly.

@brittanyrm, Thank you for that article, I think it was eye opening to the reaction to mental illness in kids.

@beyond, How would you explain that her other two kids are well behaved, or normal? Also, I don’t know about you, but I have never threatened to kill my parents, or myself.

@luciferslawyer, Can you please explain why being bi-polar is being insane, but being a sociopath is not? I’m not saying I don’t agree, I just don’t understand the point you were making.

@thekingofthenorth, Holy thesaurus batman! I think what I get from your statement is that civilization, or society, is bad system for humans to engage in. What do you think about the fact that we have been civilized for over 3,000 years now?

I certainly think the world needs to treat mental illness better. Does anyone find it weird that it seems like there are more mentally ill in the most recent generations? Or is it just that we have the social media capabilities to spread these kinds of stories?

@greenthinker, Actually I’m saying both are forms of insanity, but not all insanity is equal. What I really believe is that sanity is such a relative…thing….that each human person occupies their own space on a sliding scale of thought processing. What we call sanity is the collection of most points along that scale, fall. Insanity could be described as all points outside that collection. Therefor the insane, function, but function differently. Too often what we do is use insane and crazy as synonyms. Crazy is non-functioning.

@brittanyrm,

i think that’s the point of an asylum, to provide a place of care and growth for those who cannot control themselves, now, whether or not the specific asylum meets the standards is usually up to the individuals in charge, there are many bad examples, but i am sure there are good ones as well,

in the case of a good staff, why else would they be incapable of providing what you suggested? consider funding, it is easy to wish for a staff like that, but most places have only limited funding

@luciferslawyer, Lots of good points on this topic it sound like you know about mental illness.
I do not know what this latest murderer’s motives were, but I feel like all of the killers mentioned in the article have some common traits: isolation, lack of socialization, spending much of their time in an alternative reality (not blaming video games here but it is a common thread).
In term of the article I do think the mother is a bit of a sensationalist. No doubt she is living her own personal hell, but I feel it is unlikely that her son will ever be the next American mass-murder celebrity. Her son has displayed distinct signs of mental illness, most likely an Autism spectrum disorder which is can present with the symptoms she mentions.
What I am trying to get at is that, I feel, these killers of the past ten years or so seem to be a new breed and exist in a bit of a paradox that is difficult to spot or profile. They become more reclusive, more alienated, more angry, they get made fun of and they stuff it down. They come home after school and disappear into their rooms, they don’t talk because the world has already labeled them as “freaks”. Mom and Dad are completely out of their league because they have never dealt with anything like this before and on the surface sure their kids is anti-social but he goes to school, does not do DRUGS, and is a lot less trouble then 90% of teenagers they hear about on a daily basis. Problem is all the pent-up anger, hatred, frustration has been boiling and it is about to EXPLODE. And does more and more often…I dare say that this kids is a perverse role model to some kids that are going battling with the same demons .
I do not feel that this is so much a mental illness issue. I am not the expert on this situation and I do not know the facts but I would want to ask parents: Does your child have regular social interaction? How many hours a day do they spend on their computer? What do they do to constructively relieve stress? What sites are they visiting? What games are they playing? I feel there are a lot of warning signs within these questions, the problem is that these kids are ‘sleeper’ killers.
In the 80s it was heavy metal making kids kill, today it is computer games.
I feel this whole situation is more a matter of people becoming disconnected, disconnected to classmates, reality, their own children.
But mental illness is easier to pin it on- so a bunch of parent will drug their kids– and we will turn up the TV.

@luciferslawyer, Checked out your blog– deep and eloquent stuff. I agree with the Joker-style killer theory. I recall watching the Dark Knight and getting chills. The Joker gives exposure to an Nihilist evil genius– I am afraid for the development of any evil geniuses. But in the meantime we have less intelligent copy-cats. People who have developed a nihilist worldview, feel that this is a way they can once again ‘feel’ something in life, their own mortality mattering nothing to them, they go out in a blaze of gunfire and carnage. Perhaps their motivation is to prove a point– living on this earth has rotted out my soul and turned it into THIS! I was going to say OR for the attention but I suppose that is not the case when they kill themselves. I never thought about it but Adam Lanza may have had a message, a message much more easily dismissed under the label mentally ill.