<p>Does anyone know if it’s possible to have asperger and NPD at the same time? I read his manifesto and I just can’t wrap my head around his inner world at all.</p>
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<p>It is precisely from reading his manifesto and watching the videos combined with what I’ve heard from acquaintances working in the mental health field that I don’t feel the parents could be blamed. </p>
<p>However, I don’t believe one can completely dismiss the manifesto contents completely as delusions, either. </p>
<p>Especially considering there’s some corroboration from other accounts such as the murderer knowing he was lying when telling the cops he was bullied in that ledge incident when in actuality, he instigated it by trying to push happily socializing couples off the ledge and ended up getting himself pushed off in by others trying to prevent their friends from getting pushed off and about being relieved when the cops didn’t ask to check his apartment as he understood if they had, they would have discovered his rants and weapons stash and prevented him from carrying out his murder spree. </p>
<p>Some of his perceptions and rationalizations of the underlying reality may be twisted and deluded, but the manifesto also seems to show he didn’t lose complete touch with reality, either. </p>
<p>Exactly. Not only can’t we rely on ER’s perception of events…but we really know very little in terms of facts of who did what, particularly in relation to the parents. Therefore, judging the parents in this case seems irresponsible and unfair. Not only that, we haven’t walked in their shoes. I surely would not want to.</p>
<p>What the parents and the therapists (psychiatrists, counselors, rent-a-friend) did is just speculation at this point. I don’t have the info to make any judgment.</p>
<p>Like all of these types of incidents, we will never know all the facts. So I don’t see any harm in speculating, if that is what we say we are doing. This thread is not a trial. </p>
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<p>@shrinkrap, that’s very interesting. My sons’ doctor communicates with me quite frequently by email. The boys have texted and emailed him occasionally, also. It’s been really helpful, so I’m glad he must have a different malpractice insurance company than you do. This is the same doctor who came to our house once to examine my younger son when we thought he might be having severe side effects from a med, and who is seeing my older son at no charge (he could see him at an out-of-town clinic he goes to a couple of days a week, but he said he wouldn’t get paid any extra, anyway, and he’d rather see him in his own local office).</p>
<p>Re: the parents being to blame, I just don’t like blaming anyone for something this horrible, without proof. Would I have done some things differently? Sure. Am I pretty certain that if he were mine and the end result was the same people here could have found flaws in what I, a human, was able to do and consistently maintain as a practice despite all the problems over all the years? Oh yeah. MIGHT they have carried significant blame? Sure, I don’t know all the facts, but I won’t jump to assume them since they were clearly in there trying. Innocence until proven guilty is not an emotional response to your questions about parents, although it may be a point I’m fairly passionate about, in itself. Here it isn’t a court of law, it just seems unreasonably unkind.</p>
<p>Re: the facts in the manifesto - I’ve seen references by mental health professionals to what they term ‘unguarded writings’. I think that is kinda what this is. It was his justification and declaration of his points and while his spin is everywhere, the day to day schedule of what occurred seems accurate, as he was mentioning things he thought proved his point. (Wrongo, but nvm that.) I think people reading this can see there are serious problems beyond Aspergers assuming that was an appropriate diagnosis or even an existing diagnosis. </p>
<p>To another poster, I am not a mental health professional, and there are a couple on this thread. However, I can’t see any reason why people COULDN’T have had more than one condition. I am not precisely sure of the differences between borderline personality disorder and narcisstic personality disorder, and don’t know if there is enough in the manifesto alone to absolutely confirm he had one or both or none. But NPD was what seemed to scream out from the pages to me, based on limited education (GEs in college) and general reading.</p>
<p>GP’s biggest beef seems to be that they were funding his living in SB for no real reason and not directly managing his day-to-day life. That is a fact. However, no one thing is to blame. He could have shot up Santa Monica City College instead.</p>
<p>“It’s been really helpful, so I’m glad he must have a different malpractice insurance company than you do.”</p>
<p>Me too! I think that is a wonderful when it works. I am curious about where this is, and whether these emails are billed to the insurance or paid for at all, but there is no need to answer here. </p>
<p>“This is the same doctor who came to our house once to examine my younger son when we thought he might be having severe side effects from a med, and who is seeing my older son at no charge …”</p>
<p>This is amazing! I would love to be able to do that. We are still paying college bills (husbands and sons) , and glad we can. I am fortunate to be married to someone with benefits and to be able to afford working as an independent contractor for the county. Even better if those of lesser means get the same benefit. </p>
<p>actingmt, I agree - there is no one thing to blame for what happened. And as you said it could have happened somewhere else, too. However, until someone gives me a better explanation than I have heard so far, I don’t understand why he was able to live in this college town for three years when he wasn’t going to school, didn’t have a job and was clearly not getting help for his condition. I find this highly unusual and, in my view, the parents have to bear some responsibility for allowing it to happen.</p>
<p>Perhaps professionals advised the parents that their son needed some independence and to not live at home any longer…and he was an adult after all. He had tried local colleges and for various reasons, a decision was made to try this set up. I don’t see why it matters he was in Santa Barbara or elsewhere. He was an adult and not living in a locked up situation and if he was going to carry out such an act of revenge, he could do it anywhere.</p>
<p>Speculating and blaming are two different things. We can speculate that ER’s lifestyle - living on his own with his parents financial support for three years with no job or school - made his mental issues worse and led to the tragedy. That is not blaming his parents. They certainly enabled him to live this way. If they knew he was getting worse in that environment, but allowed it continue, then we might decide to blame them for contributing to the ultimate outcome.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why you are linking the “Healing the Child Within” guy, GP. I’m not sure how that is more credible than the “Hollywood therapist to the stars” who has been referenced. I don’t know if you are saying that ER was trying to assert his boundaries or that his parents lacked appropriate boundaries in not cutting him completely off. Certainly they didn’t ask him to assume inappropriate adult emotional roles or treat him as a surrogate spouse after their divorce. </p>
<p>It’s funny . . . I read that book back when I was about 22 and everything was still my parent’s fault. By the time I was 30 I had sold my copy back to the used book store and purchased “Raising Your Spirited Child” instead. When we had our first kid who was relatively easy (after the first 3 months) we thought we had it down. DH, who grew up in an unhappy home, set out to be the parent he didn’t have and it was exactly the parent that kid #1 needed. He coached sports teams, umpired, went on fishing trips, did projects in the garage, was involved on all kinds of levels. Guess what . . . kid #2 had his own personality and the dad who DH had wanted was not the dad that was best suited to our son. We had to adapt. With every child parents are reinventing the wheel. We go into it thinking we know stuff and try to do it right. Sometimes we get lucky and end up attributing much of our child’s inherent personality to our brilliance. Sometimes not. Short of the obvious like buying weapons for your mentally ill child or plying him with alcohol . . . much of parenting is trial and error. For all my effort and good will in that regard I still hope my kids aren’t picking apart what I did or didn’t do for their elementary school birthday parties or basing any moments of unhappiness on the speed of our internet connection.</p>
<p>If we don’t “pick apart” what was done or not done here, how can we learn anything from it?</p>
<p>Some of you seem resigned to the idea that there was nothing that could have been done to stop this killer. I guess you are the ones who don’t want to talk about the parents’ roles here. Those of us who want to believe it could have been prevented are going to be looking at, weighing and judging everything. Why shouldn’t we? Six lives were lost for no reason. Isn’t that a good enough reason to judge what the parents did or didn’t do? I think it is.</p>
<p>“Isn’t that a good enough reason to judge what the parents did or didn’t do? I think it is.”</p>
<p>I think it depends on how the judgment will be used. Research and additional resources get a pass. Shame and punishment, not so much. </p>
<p>I think Mainelonghorn is saying he has a psychiatrist who provides email services, perhaps without reimbursement, and in his home, for no charge! I am all for it, but how sustainable is that? Credentialing in psychiatry takes as much time as general surgery, and child psychiatry even more. Unlike surgery these residencies go unfilled. </p>
<p>Yes, I am taking it personally, so I will sign off for now. </p>
<p>I think it is a different thing to say ‘what might work with a child like this?’ and speculate about what might be helpful, than to say the parents should have at minimum been experts and ‘enabled’ him, which seems more like blaming to me. Yeah, they paid for Santa Barbara, but apparently they thought living at home was possibly part of his problem. They removed him from the area and the life patterns that weren’t working for him. Living in Santa Monica it could have taken about the same time to get to him from North Hills as living in Santa Barbara, depending on traffic, to be honest. I have no idea if they were right in what they did, and frankly think this was worse, but I acknowledge that involves 20/20 hindsight and my own biases, when I say so. </p>
<p>But talk about speculating, I have mentioned it before, but I wonder if they HAD given him a deadline, specifically the end of this academic year, for when he would have to come back or try something else. He did repeatedly say that the day he chose was the last one possible since SBCC’s graduation was that day. He seemed to be looking for excuses to put it off, as I read his manifesto, which makes me wonder if his situation was set to change, and if that was why he thought that was his last opportunity. </p>
<p>I acknowledge that is speculation, however.</p>
<p>Many excellent posts today. Agree completely that questioning and exploring in an attempt to learn and understand is one thing, and beneficial. Attacking or blaming the parents, especially with limited and likely skewed information is quite another. </p>
<p>Our malpractice insurance bases its rates on assessment of risk. There are some practices (eg custody evaluations, forensic work, working with suicidal or what we uses to call axis II patients (personality disorders , anger management issues, etc) carries a higher risk than some other practices with a say health, growth orientation. And some professionals are comfortable with a higher degree of risk than others. </p>
<p>As he was a young adult dealing with socialization issues, among others, living in a college town with same aged peers any the possibility of participating in activities of interest to that population makes perfect sense. </p>
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<p>Someone earlier in the thread linked to a NYT article written by a MH professional who stated there is no definitive way to ID a potential mass killer beforehand and that people looking to MH professionals to do so are expecting the impossible. </p>
<p>If even mental heath professionals have issues IDing a potential mass murderer, how can we expect the same of parents or family members who aren’t professionals?</p>
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<p>We do it to accumulate knowledge on how to handle the mentally ill and prevent them from killing innocent people. If the parents feel shame as a result of others judging that their course of action was the wrong one, well, I’m having a hard time feeling bad for them when six kids are dead, and others may live because we drew a conclusion on what not to do.</p>
<p>@shrinkrap, I know I can’t expect other doctors to provide the service that ours does. I have the feeling he decided to do pro bono work for us since we were paying him full-charge for two kids for a couple of years. When he heard that our business had dropped off dramatically, he decided to cut us a break.</p>
<p>I certainly understand high-price insurance. My husband and I pay a ridiculous amount for professional liability coverage, since we’re structural engineers! Yikes. As a two-person firm, we pay the same premiums that a larger company would. I don’t get it.</p>