Free Republic

In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness. Three days before 20 year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, then opened fire on a classroom full of Connecticut kindergartners, my 13-year old son Michael (name changed) missed his bus because he was wearing the wrong color pants. “I can wear these pants,” he said, his tone increasingly belligerent, the black-hole pupils of his eyes swallowing the blue irises. “They are navy blue,” I told him. “Your school’s dress code says black or khaki pants only.” “They told...

Ms Conte called the ordeal 'sad' for Lanza and his family, and suggested that the violence is a portion of a much larger situation. 'Guns are easy to point to, but it's really a mental health issue.'

As we reported last night, buried inside the NYT biopic of Newtown shooter Adam Lanza was arguably one of the most important missing pieces in the story, at least so far, which could provide clues into partially explaining yesterday's tragic loss of young life, namely that the 20 year old man suffered from Asperger Syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism (two conditions which are being merged in the upcoming update of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) manual of mental disorders), which has been traditionally associated with social communication difficulties, including flat affect, and one which in some clinical studies...

J.T. Dulany has been pinned down more times than he can remember. Competing mostly in the 103-pound weight class throughout his four years at Our Lady of Mount Carmel High School in Essex, the 19-year-old varsity wrestler said it took opponents an average of one minute to press his shoulders to the mat. “My strategy was to pray to God that they didn’t beat me up that bad,” Dulany remembered with a laugh. His joke belied a fighting spirit. Legally blind since his premature birth, Dulany underwent seven eye surgeries before he was 2. He has a mild form of...

People with 'mild' forms of autism are more likely to be atheists, according to a controversial new study — and more likely to shun organized religion in general. The study, which looked at posts on autism forums, focused on people with high-functioning autism such as Asperger's. The study, from University of Boston, speculates that common autistic spectrum behaviors such as 'a preference for logical beliefs' and a distrust of metaphor and figures of speech, could be responsible. The study authors, Catherine Caldwell-Harris and Patrick MacNamara studied discussions by 192 different posters on an autism website. They also looked at a...

So what is the matter with Obama? Conservatives have been asking this question for some time. I've written a number of articles trying to solve the mystery.   Even some liberals are starting to wonder. James Carville railed about Obama's blasé attitude after the catastrophic oil spill. The New York Times' Maureen Dowd revamped Obama's "Yes We Can" motto into "Will We Ever?" The liberal women of the TV show "The View" have expressed sympathy for Michelle Obama's living with a man so out of touch. Peggy Noonan, hardly a vehement Obama foe,  recently pronounced him disconnected.  Obama's odd mannerisms intrigue...

Autism Genome Project Phase 2 results published in Nature Mount Sinai researchers and the Autism Genome Project Consortium (AGP) announced today that they have identified new autism susceptibility genes that may lead to the development of new treatment approaches. These genes, which include SHANK2, SYNGAP1, DLGAP2 and the X-linked DDX53–PTCHD1 locus, primarily belong to synapse-related pathways, while others are involved in cellular proliferation, projection and motility, and intracellular signaling. The findings were published today in Nature by researchers at the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, together with an international consortium of researchers...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A hormone thought to encourage bonding between mothers and their babies may foster social behavior in some adults with autism, French researchers said on Monday. They found patients who inhaled the hormone oxytocin paid more attention to expressions when looking at pictures of faces and were more likely to understand social cues in a game simulation, the researchers said in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Angela Sirigu of the Center of Cognitive Neuroscience in Lyon, who led the study, said the hormone has a therapeutic potential in adults as well as in children...

Asperger's syndrome is really just a form of autism and does not merit a separate diagnosis, according to a panel of researchers assembled by the American Psychiatric Association. --snip-- But a new draft fifth edition released Wednesday moves Asperger's officially into the autism category, provoking a wide range of responses among people with Asperger's — some of whom say they do not want to be labeled as autistic.

Obesity is a disease of excess, but a new study suggests that a few obese patients are actually lacking something--a piece of one of their chromosomes. The loss might remove a gene that helps the body manage blood sugar and appetite. Obesity runs in families, and researchers have identified several genetic variants that seem to boost the odds of becoming obese. However, these variants only explain a minority of cases. In the last decade, researchers have discovered that genetic differences among people can stem from lost or duplicated sections of chromosomes, called copy number variants (CNVs). Because of CNVs, for...

As many of you know, I'm the mom of two autistic kids. While I've been blessed that they are high-functioning, it has been and continues to be something we struggle with. It can be exhausting. The last statistics I had read about the prevelance of autism spectrum disorders placed the number at 1 in every 100 kids. That's staggering. Could you imagine the outcry from the gay community if this was AIDS we were talking about? But yet the Washington DC voices remain silent.

Gary McKinnon the Pentagon computer hacker, cannot survive the US prison system, medical assessments at the centre of a last-ditch legal bid to stay his extradition say. New psychiatric reports lodged in the High Court claim that Mr McKinnon, who suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, is now suicidal and will “almost inevitably” take his own life if sent for trial in America. For the first time the papers include evidence from an American medical expert directly challenging assurances from the US government about how he would be treated. Mr McKinnon’s lawyers submitted an application for a judicial review of Alan Johnson,...

Just when the pharmaceutical industry thought the vaccine-autism controversy had been resolved, the National Vaccine Advisory Committee has recommended further study of vaccine safety. A perceived fear of the safety of the U.S. vaccination schedule has led increasing numbers of parents to opt out of full compliance. The numbers of children who are not fully vaccinated has now reached a point where “herd” immunity may be compromised, compelling the Centers for Disease Control to hold town-hall meetings and convene a Vaccine Safety Working Subgroup. Despite research ruling out mercury (Thimerosal) or the measles portion of one specific vaccine, autism continues...

Natural News Vaccines cause autism: Supporting evidence October 6 - Rates of autism have skyrocketed 1000% since 1990, yet defenders of vaccines and the pharmaceutical industry keep scratching their heads in confusion: What could be causing this? Lots of clues point to vaccines... Autism rates double in children as vaccines poison an entire generation According to a U.S. government survey just published, rates of autism in children have doubled since 2003. Today, an estimated 1 in 91 children are being diagnosed with autism ...

Over the past year I have been going over articles about Asperger's syndrome. Asperger's syndrome is considered to be a highly functioning form of autism yet it is also considered to be a disability. Members of the autism community have worked for years trying to downplay the severity of the disorder. I first heard about Asperger's in 1998 while watching a documentary. Asperger's disorder was first invented by a German doctor named Hans Asperger. (the disorder was named after him.) Asperger did study on children who though they were bright were considered awkward. The world health organization began to use...

Leo Lytel was diagnosed with autism as a toddler. But by age 9 he had overcome the disorder. His progress is part of a growing body of research that suggests at least 10 percent of children with autism can "recover" from it — most of them after undergoing years of intensive behavioral therapy. Skeptics question the phenomenon, but University of Connecticut psychology professor Deborah Fein is among those convinced it's real. She presented research this week at an autism conference in Chicago that included 20 children who, according to rigorous analysis, got a correct diagnosis but years later were no...

Researchers have found a way to slow overactive brain cells that may be triggering neurological disorders Scientists say they have pinpointed a gene in the brain that can calm nerve cells that become too jumpy, potentially paving the way for new therapies to treat autism and other neurological disorders. "It's exciting because it opens the field up," says Michael Greenberg, a neurobiologist at Harvard Medical School. "Nobody has [found] a gene that controls the process in quite that way before."....

Shock Jock Michael Savage is in hot water again this time for a stating his belief that 99% of Autism cases are fake. He has taken a beating from parents of autistic children and those who lobby for them. However, let us play devil's advocate for a moment... Are Savage's comments mean spirited or could there be some truth to it? Are children who are diagnosed with autism and Asperger's syndrome (Considered a high functioning form of Autism) being over diagnosed? Are the diagnostic criteria for Autism and Asperger's really too broad and too flawed that otherwise ordinary playful children...

"New Ways to Diagnose Autism Earlier" read a recent headline in the Wall Street Journal. There is no question that you can diagnose anything as early as you want. The real question is whether the diagnosis will turn out to be correct. My own awareness of how easy it is to make false diagnoses of autism grew out of experiences with a group of parents of late-talking children that I formed back in 1993. A number of those children were diagnosed as autistic. But the passing years have shown most of the diagnoses to have been false, as most of...

New evidence shows that the brains of adults with autism are "wired" differently from people without the disorder, and this abnormal pattern of connectivity may be responsible for the social impairments that are characteristic of autism. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, a team of researchers affiliated with the University of Washington's Autism Center also found that the most severely socially impaired subjects in the study exhibited the most abnormal pattern of connectivity among a network of brain regions involved in face processing. "This study shows that these brain regions are failing to work together efficiently," said Natalia Kleinhans, a research...