Sadly, I think this is exactly what happened.

Someone mentioned elsewhere that he had been given Geodon (which he, apparently, didn't like and wanted to come off).  Here's what I found on another forum about Geodon (Geodon's an antipsychotic which is prescribed to treat the symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder) >>

"I have a son on Geodone, I know this one is fairly new, but I am woundering if anyone is having problems with irritability, violent behavior and inability to think rashly...."

"I have been on Geodon 80mg twice a day for 9 days now. I am having violent behaviors,and I know it sounds weird but when I am dreaming, I can not tell if my dream was something I did or if it was a dream. It is really runing my life. Please I want to know if this is something from this medication or what I need to do."

"I have been taking Geodon for the last month and just stopped. This last month I have experienced three Rage Episodes. During the episodes I wanted to kill or maim loved ones and family members. I could actually visualize the distruction. I was extreemely frightened. Turning the Rage outward put my family in jeopardy and turning the Rage inward put my life at risk. It took all my self-control to prevent the violence. I was unaware that I was capable of experiencing such intense violent emotions."

http://www.drugs.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=683

:cry:

Thats difficult to do currently, as we have no way of blocking off a forum to some members, and not others, basically minors who could read unsuitable or upsetting things.

The chatroom is always accessible and people have expressed very serious issues and emotions there, and we have a room for adults only where it would be possible to talk about it, and also people can talk privately too.
Its also a quicker medium to give real-time responses.

Positive response from CAN - this is part of the email reponse from my question about a possible crisis line for adults with autism -

We have been discussing the particular challenges individuals with
Asperger's face and where we might be able to help. For starters, we're
participating in a community meeting in Orange County this Thursday. We
have also discussed the need for more long-term services, such as a
24-hr help line. Although we're not in a position to launch such a
service in the near future, we might be able to offer some financial
support. We definitely recognize the need for such a service.



So it may be possible that in the long term a crisis line could be set up, and in the short term that they may consider helping to fund such a crisis line.
Does anyone know of major autism charities in the US that already have a parents helpline, and may be willing to set up a specialised line for aspies and auties, if funding was available from additional sources?

Nice idea, in theory.  However, I'd be concerned that maybe well-meaning advice might actually be unhelpful, or even inappropriate.

It's one thing for people to post in a general forum and raise queries or problems, or even to do so in a chatroom, it's appreciated that you're in a peer group.  Putting something out there as some kind of (semi)'official' support forum, or special place to go for, for 'expert' advice, when we're not trained or qualified to give it...  well, that just makes me uneasy really.  I'm certainly not saying even that the 'experts' have all the answers, because I don't think they do, and sometimes their attitudes can even be harmful.  I'd just be very worried that people might think it was something that it's not, that it would be perceived to be more authoritative than it actually would be.

There's also the legal implications to think of.  Sorry to point this out, but if, say, that chap had come into a special part of the forums for advice about his situation, and then he carried out his acts, I'm sure, given the litigious nature of US society, and increasingly ours in the UK, his parents or his victims families might want to bring a legal action for compensation.  It's one thing for a bulletin board to be a bulletin board, and for people to raise concerns about a poster or to dismiss him as a troll, but I think it would be another thing entirely if something was specifically 'advertised' or labelled as a support service.

There's already a helpline over here, run by the NAS, although it's not 24 hours and it's not a kind of emergency or emotional support, it's more to do with practical matters, I think.  But there's also the Samaritans, which does specialise in offering a 24-hour crisis line, but they don't specialise in auties or aspies.

Maybe there's a case for the NAS or CAN or whoever, to help fund training to create awareness for those organisations who do specialise in offering telephone support lines, so that they are more aware of the problems auties and aspies face, they can recognise them better, and they can deal with the callers appropriately, taking into account their special needs and talk to them or refer them as needs be?

Given that an organisation like the Samaritans already has an existing infrastructure of call centres and drop in centres and trained volunteers, I think it would probably be more cost effective, practical, and feasible to go along that route.

I'm not sure that it would be possible to set up a brand new call centre infrastructure and fund it, I mean even Childline has had major funding problems and might be restricting opening times of its phone lines or cutting back on provision.  If a major national organisation like that has problems...

Well CAN only operates in the USA, so presumably they would help fund a helpline there, if they did go ahead with it.
The helpline by the NAS is hard to get through to, depending when you phone, and which day, and its not for crisis help. The samaritans do a good job and help people, but for people with autism, I think they cannot have the expertise to give specific advice.

There seem to be a lot of helplines in the USA, maybe childline and similar struggle so much in the UK because the cost of phonecalls is higher.
*curses a certain high profit company*

There's this one Amy:

mental healthline (freephone) 0808 808 3333

7 pm - 11 pm every day.

This is for anyone with mental health issues "When you just need someone to talk to..."  says its card. "Here to listen."

The card was given to me by a lady from the community mental health team, but I have no idea how helpful it is.

Stella

Thanks for posting that Stella, I tried the number and its only for Kent and Medway(sp?), so its specific for your area.
Maybe we should make a list of local and national numbers for people, and have a link from the front page of the site.

If anyone knows of such numbers, post them on this thread, then we can compile a list and have it linked from the front page.

How very New Labour! In their scramble to try to palm everthying off on the voluntary sector that isn't profitable to privatize, the local mental health team have even given out help line numbers for a completely different region! I live in East Sussex!

Stella

Did you try the number, does it let you get through? I got a tape-recorded message telling me the area it was available to.

Amy, I just tried it and it seems it does work from Brighton (though I got a recorded message saying all their operators were busy)

There is also SANELINE

0845 7678000

Stella

I have made this so far, linked from the front page, I can add more numbers later - http://www.aspiesforfreedom.com/autismhelplines.html


edit: added the number, thanks Stella.

BT siad

It looks like they would take seriously this sort of thing. :smile: I wonder how common that is?

Slayings raise questions about online threats

By Alicia Chang

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


LOS ANGELES - Two weeks before William Freund donned a mask and cape and fatally shot two neighbors before killing himself, members of an online forum for people with a rare mental disorder read the 19-year-old's string of violent rantings.

Freund's online musings and his pre-Halloween rampage raised fresh questions about the little-policed world of Internet discussion rooms: What, if anything, should Web site gatekeepers do when users post threatening messages online?

Internet law experts generally agree there is no legal onus on site owners or users to notify police. Cyberspace is so intricate and its users often anonymous that to react to every threatening post would be impossibly time-consuming and expensive.

Still, ethicists say operators should try to alert authorities if they think a user is serious about committing harm. While monitors of Freund's postings unsuccessfully tried to reach his parents, they didn't reach out to authorities.

"If there are signs that people are going off the deep end and we don't do anything about it, then it could have calamitous results," said Richard Spinello, a Boston College professor who specializes in technology and ethics.

In recent years, a handful of chat-room users who published violent messages have been prosecuted, but such threats rarely are carried out, legal experts say.

Web sites where the threats are posted are rarely sued because they're not legally bound to alert police, said Nicolas Terry, an Internet law expert at Saint Louis University's Center for Health Law Studies.

Before last weekend's shootings, Freund begged for help and told an online message board for people with Asperger's syndrome, a neurological disorder marked by a lack of social and communications skills, that he was lonely and suicidal and would begin a "terror campaign to hurt those that have hurt me."

Some users of the Web site, wrongplanet.net, thought Freund was crying wolf. Others reached out with advice.

"He seemed really troubled, but he didn't seem like the type of person who would do this," said site operator Alexander Plank, 19, a computer science student at George Mason University.

Since the killings, Plank said, the site's monitors have become more vigilant about online postings and are debating whether to collect information about users. One Internet scholar warned against that approach.

"It is very risky to impose responsibility on Web site owners to police their users," said Jennifer Granick, executive director of Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society. "How do you know if someone is serious? Are you making a big deal out of nothing? How hard are you supposed to try? Are you betraying the person?"

In recent years, online chat rooms have mushroomed into virtual communities where people can reinvent themselves behind screen names. For people with a rare disorder such as Asperger's, interacting online can be especially therapeutic.

But online forums can also free some users to post exaggerations or lies, making it difficult for Webmasters to distinguish fact from fiction. And many of those message boards are patrolled by volunteers who may not be able to recognize a problem because they are young or not trained as mental health professionals.

After the shootings, one member of wrongplanet wrote that, "no-one here has the capability - in any practical sense - to offer the level and sort of help needed."

Complicating the matter are privacy laws and Web site policies that prohibit operators from surrendering personal user information to the government, unless there is an immediate danger.

Authorities are still trying to determine what set off Freund on Oct. 29, when he drove to his neighbors' home in Aliso Viejo, a wealthy section of Orange County and killed a father and his 22-year-old daughter. The teen also fired into another home, wounding the person inside, and tried to shoot another neighbor. When his gun misfired, he went home and committed suicide.

Orange County sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino later urged Internet users to call police if they notice suspicious postings.

After the shootings, the wrongplanet site fluttered with comments.

"I think if there is ever another member here who says things about wanting to harm people," read one posting, "we should do something about it. I don't know what we can do, though."

On the Net:

Orange County Sheriff's Department: http://www.ocsd.org

Asperger's syndrome chat room: http://wrongplanet.net/

************************************************************