At a conference that Gareth and I attended this year, Patricia Howlin was a speaker, and showed recent study results that said that aspies from 18-25 years of age were LESS likely to be involved in violent behaviour than NTs, as an example.
She said that in the past it was assumed that aspies may commit more crime than average, but this was not accurate, however she did point out a few of the cases where an obsession went too far and an item was stolen relating to the obsession.
I notice you said 'aspires', was that deliberate as a name for aspies?
In europe, hemp is used for clothing and textiles, various products, usually in organic form, for people who prefer natural products.
I am sure that smoking it is harmful though, as harmful as smoking tobacco, its not natural to inhale something into the lungs like that.
But a lot of people choose to smoke, as long as they do it far away from me...I loathe smoking :evil:
I saw a very sad news item a few years ago.
A semi-verbal autistic man was remanded in prison whilst awaiting trial, he had not commited a serious or violent offence, but was placed in an overcrowded prison with a violent convicted criminal.
His family were extremely concerned about him. He had uncontrollable tics, and was a very nervous, anxious person.
Within 48 hours he had been murdered by his prison inmate.
Horrifying. This happened in England.
With regard to the article about some supposed predispositon to crime in aspies, I disagree with two things that were written about aspies in that article.
I do not believe that any aspies who I know in real life are unable to forsee the consequences of their actions, exept maybe one particular kind of consequence, the behaviour of neurotypical people in response to our actions. I can often find no rhyme or reason in the way NTs respond to things that I do or say. But I fully understand the dangers of doing dangerous things. I'm quite terrified of guns and chainsaws. A great amount of the ability to understand dangerous consequences comes from common sense/general knowledge/education. I can imagine that if an aspie or an autie has been very socially isolated, has had very limited life experiences, has not had an adequate education, or has some kind of learning disability such as dyslexia, they could have a lack of knowledge about dangerous consequences.
The bit about aspies being unable to judge the age of other people seems like bollocks to me, unless this is some obscure feature of face-blindness which some aspies are supposed to have. I believe I can judge a person's age pretty much as well as anyone. I have in the past dated guys who were quite different to myself in age. That was because I do not discriminate on the basis of age. I was an equal opportunity dater.
I do agree that two reasons why an aspie might do crime is poverty and unemployment. We know way too much about those subjects. :evil:
Drug Alcohol Rev. 1998 Dec;17(4):433-44.
Cannabis use and psychosis.
Hall WD.
National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052, Australia.
This paper reviews evidence on two hypotheses about the relationship between cannabis use and psychosis. The first hypothesis is that heavy cannabis use may cause a "cannabis psychosis"-a psychosis that would not occur in the absence of cannabis use, the symptoms of which are preceded by heavy cannabis use and remit after abstinence. The second hypothesis is that cannabis use may precipitate schizophrenia, or exacerbate its symptoms. Evaluation of these hypotheses requires evidence of an association between cannabis use and psychosis, that is unlikely to be due to chance, in which cannabis use precedes psychosis, and in which we can exclude the hypothesis that the relationship is due to other factors, such as other drug use, or a personal vulnerability to psychosis. There is some clinical support for the first hypothesis. If these disorders exist they seem to be rare, because they require very high doses of THC, the prolonged use of highly potent forms of cannabis, or a pre-existing (but as yet unspecified) vulnerability. There is more support for the second hypothesis, in that a large prospective study has shown a linear relationship between the frequency with which cannabis has been used by age 18 and the risks over the subsequent 15 years of a diagnosis of schizophrenia. It is still unclear whether this means that cannabis use precipitates schizophrenia, whether it is a form of "self-medication", or whether the association is due to the use of other drugs, such as amphetamines, which heavy cannabis users are more likely to use. There is stronger evidence that cannabis use can exacerbate the symptoms of schizophrenia. Mental health services should identify patients with schizophrenia who use alcohol, cannabis and other drugs and advise them to abstain or to greatly reduce their drug use.
I am very bad at working out ages. I dont know why, it may be because its not very important to me so I dont consider it much.
Quintucket wrote
It's worried me for some time that Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczinsky may have had Asperger's, and though fortunately nobody's yet brought it up in the media, I swear I've heard Kaczinski mentioned in the context at least once.
There's nothing in McVeigh's biography that suggests autism to me. His friends and the respect he had from superiors while in the army are mentioned, no mention of any conflict with supervisors or unpopularity with peers. Did he have any neurological or developmental conditions or peculiarities?
As for Teddy boy, the reasoning behind why he sent those bombs is nuts. Apparently he was copying a novel that he had read when young. Autists aren't known for that kind of suggestible and irrational behaviour. I think his diagnosis of paraniod schizophrenia was correct. AS has been suggested in this case, but I think it's a second-best explanation.
Box 6 Features of Asperger syndrome that affect an individual’s reliability as a witness
* The risk of misinterpretation of what he has seen or heard.
* Difficulty with the dimension of time. Although the person may recall the sequence of events correctly, his perception of the relative periods of intervening time may be so inaccurate as to make it unclear as to whether he is recounting something that happened the previous day, week or year.
* Difficulty in distinguishing his own actions from those of others, which may extend to a confusion of reality with observed fiction.
* Difficulty with the normal structure of official interviews, whether in the police station or the witness box, where the unfamiliar surroundings and circumstances will increase his disabilities.
* The interview can be distorted by the misinterpretation of rules and relationships, with undue compliance complicated by a rigid tendency to adhere to (and believe in) a story once it is in his head.
Huh? All this is news to me. Where did this come from? It doesn't seem to apply to me at all. This sounds more like a person who is deluded than a person with AS.
The first three do and have applied to me in the past.
In addition, the stress and the judgement calls would not make me the best witness.
You mean that if you saw someone do something, you'd later on think that you did it yourself? That doesn't sound AS related, that sounds like something else altogether.
She never said that she would think that she did it herself. :shock:
because i know i can put in stratages to help me appear more like everyone else. but the condidtion hasn't changed one bit. it isn't a condition of childhood that gets milder.
I agree. Some people think our child's sensory hypersensitivity is a childhood condition that can be trained out of a child, or that will disappear as the brain matures, but I know this is nonsense, as I know that the child has an elderly relative with the same sensory sensitivity at the same or greater intensity.
Quintucket wrote
It's worried me for some time that Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczinsky may have had Asperger's, and though fortunately nobody's yet brought it up in the media, I swear I've heard Kaczinski mentioned in the context at least once.
There's nothing in McVeigh's biography that suggests autism to me. His friends and the respect he had from superiors while in the army are mentioned, no mention of any conflict with supervisors or unpopularity with peers. Did he have any neurological or developmental conditions or peculiarities?
n.
Well, it had actually been often suggested in the media that Kaz was so (I know nothing about Mak), and though I (me gwynfryn) don't align with his methods, I can understand his discomfort....I expect you are right to diferentiate them? And the idiot killed far more people!
I thought Ted K was motivated by some crackpot Luddite philosophy more than anything else, but I must admit I'm no expert on his case. I don't think he really had much in common with us.