I couldn't find me a link to this one, but did anyone see the article in the daily mail yesterday? jesus, its about some kid who attacked and almost killed an old woman with a knife, because he wanted to go to jail, and thought that he might gain some kind of notoriety or status inside for his crime.
All they said, was "he suffered from a sociopathic personality disorder related to autism"
I don't know about you lot, but that REALLY pisses me off, since when would an autistic person CARE about status in that particular, narrow kind of way? we certainly aren't known for it.
I sent the Daily Mail another letter yesterday about this little nasty, and if anyoen could type up the article, or post a link (broken of course) to it here so the rest of us can vent their spleen to the Daily Scaremonger, I would be most grateful
Lestat (fly in the ointment) Rett.
Hehe. You should send that quote to the Daily Mail, MaxBear.
Since when is antisocial personality disorder related to autism, may I ask? It isnt even on the same axis of the DSM!
Since when is antisocial personality disorder related to autism, may I ask?
Since our intrepid "journalists" 
decided they could pump up some lurid headlines.
I think I'm going to start running a googl news search every few days -- look for articles with word combinations of autism, Asperger's, sociopath and anti-social. I'd like to verify how wide-spread this crap is becoming.
For example, in this article today about Fragile X...
"blah blah blah blah Despite being the most common inherited form of learning difficulties, there is little public awareness of Fragile X, which has a range of symptoms. Mild cases are not always diagnosed, because children are sociable and friendly, but demand a lot of attention and affection. In more severe cases, children display antisocial behaviours similar to autistic spectrum disorders. Blah blah blah"
There's a common confusion about the word "antisocial" -- people erroniously use it to mean uninterested social interaction, which may be what this writer means. But then when serial killers are called 'antisocial" in the sense of psychopathic, the link is made in the public mind : Autistic = Psychopathic killer.
At the very least, "journalists" should be careful about their words... at the most, they should be taken to task for spreading vicious misinformation.
These papers print so many outraged articles about varying topics, I wonder how they have any outrage left to vent.
My letter (both of them) to the daily bollocks weren't spiteful, just pointing out that the autie community as a whole, tend to get pissed off when journos write sensationalist crap (and the last article I wrote to them about, was downright incendiary), and why it only serves to cause isolation and strife between both us, and NT.
I was in a bad mood at the time I had written that, reading an article like the one they printed whilst on a filthy sniff hangover, does not a happy autie make
I wasn't referring to the first article, the one on Cho Seung-Hui, that was bad, but the daily mail let loose with a really degrading, poorly written and inflammatory article, a few days after, about some psycho fruitcake who more or less shanked his granny in the neck "because he wanted the status that would come from going inside"
They then made out, repeatedly, that he suffered from a "sociopathic personality related to autism"
That, is what really got my goat, incidentally, who is Russel T Davies? I haven't heard of him.
The only possible explanation I can think of for what a "sociopathic personality disorder related to autism" would be is Schizoid PD. Features of SPD are common in sociopaths, and in autistics, but are caused by very different things in the two groups. Most SPD individuals are just basically on the border between mild autism and extreme introversion - *not* potential killers - but a small proportion are actually loner sociopaths.
But there's a major difference between "sociopathic" and "autistic". The meanings are different. True, there may well be people who are both, but that doesn't mean they're inextricably linked.
All they said, was "he suffered from a sociopathic personality disorder related to autism"?
What? From what I know, Autism and Sociopathology aren't related.
Wow, if they locked up teens who cut themselves, they'd have to lock up an eighth of the nation. That's how many people try it at least once before college age (at least in the particular college where they did the study that was quoted in a book I read once...)
Oh, yeah. Antisocial Personality Disorder merges psychopathy and sociopathy. Some people are pretty annoyed at the merger, but frankly I don't see much difference.
