The violence stigma.

Hello Everyone, welcome back to the Audacious Aspie! Today will take a slightly more somber tone, as it pertains to court case of the shooter in Parkland, Florida. In case you have not heard, the defense lawyer of the shooter has decided to blame, of all things, autism, as the reason why he did what he did. Now I’m not going to argue whether the shooter is guilty or not, but the more relevant topic: how destructive the lawyers poor choice of defence, to blame autism, something for that there is no cure, does not automatically make the person violent, and, on the contrary, can make the person him/herself more susceptible to violent acts against them. In the next couple of posts, I will explain why.

 

For some of us, the statement above is equivalent to saying that the sun will rise in the East and set in the West (I think that’s how it goes, I’ve never monitored the sun's travels. I feel sorry for the person who had that boring job). For others, it comes as a shock. Why do people think autistic people are violent in the first place? It may be, coming from what I have experienced and what my parents have taught me, a mixture of misunderstanding on the part of people who are not themselves on the spectrum or know someone who is, as will as the difficulty of which someone on the spectrum has when voicing their opinions, wants and needs. Especially when they are children.

 

For the first part: when a person on the spectrum “acts out”, or more appropriately, has a meltdown, it means that the person has had too much stimulus be it human interaction, noise or the like, and must be taken away form the environment to calm down. To the untrained eye, however, the person might seem like they are beginning to act out with no rhyme nor reason. One minute they are happy, perhaps a little subdued, the next they are violent and aggressive, screaming, crying, perhaps throwing things around.

 

Such actions, naturally, scare those who do not understand what is going on or why. And that, I believe, is how the myth got about. Think of it like the Tide-pod eating challenge: someone performs an action that seems rather bizarre and confusing. To those who are knowledgeable in the field that concerns itself with things, like the act (in this case eating tide-pods directly links to a physical health problem) elicits the appropriate emotional response (in both cases worry, and urge to help the person). They also feel the need to spread the message to the public, teaching them how to react appropriately when faced with the situation (tide-pod bad, apple good. Eat apple. Why are we even talking about this?).

 

It may look like a big bowl of delicious sugar, but really it’s a big bowl or heart stopping, muscle tensing (rigor mortis), bone chilling death. Don't eat it.

 

We will call these people, experts (Compared to teenagers eating tide-pods, anyone can be an expert). Not everyone is an expert though (previous sentence exempted), and if your one of the people who see the act playing out but don’t know what it could mean, your reaction might be vastly different from an experts, potentially negative. Without meaning to, you could make the situation worse. Like watching the act, than coming up with negative beliefs or ideas based, rightly or wrongly, how you think or how you feel, than spread that message around by what you do, what you say and what you post.

 

What can you do to stop the cycle? Read up on the subject, ask questions like “does a cognitive disability really cause a person to be violent?” and look at the other factors surrounding the person instead like: their immediate environment, is it noisy, bright or crowded? Who are they interacting with; does it look like they are trying to calm the person down or are they making it worse? The person’s body language; are they smiling, laughing, looking distraught or physically trying to shut everything out, like blocking their ears with their hands? And finally ask yourself this: is this person really acting violent? Often, no. And when they are, it’s not for the sake of being violent.

 

Will, this has been one long post, something we will continue with next week, as will as finish finding out whether there is a link between autism/aspergers and ADHD. Until next time, this continues to be, the Audacious Aspie.     

 

Sources:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00223980.2016.1175998.