Katie looked so beautiful in her pictures. I will probably always have that image of her with her teletubbie in my mind.

The world is a little bit poorer for the loss of Katie. That is part of the “truth”.

Once those hormones start jumping and shaking it can be nerve racking for most parents/ carers/ professionals etc.

Why does this case remind me of those kids that get hold of a gun and go on a mindless killing spree ….. frustration, irrational behaviour, self-hate, confusion, lack of self esteem …. it’s endless.

I really believe Andrew when he says “I’m bad now, I can feel it. I can’t help the things I do.” My heart goes out to him and his family.

All I can say is that’s one massive chemical cocktail.

My solution, and I would do this for my own son, God forbid that it ever happens to him/us, but it could.

Please send these kids out to live on a farm for 2 years, minimum, let them scream, shout, unwind, chill, cry, laugh whatever. Introduce them into some healthy physical work, let them know how important they are to the farm life and slowly, if they want, introduce them back into our “very complex and often frightening” NT life. By the way, aren’t the farmers crying out for extra labour.

Have you heard of the phrase “we need to be cruel to be kind”, and this solution is for “all” kids that are crushed and suppressed by our manmade system of rules and regulations.

Is this how we really are meant to be living?

I would not say “autism’s darker side” I prefer to say “society’s darker side”.

Additionally, her son was institutionalized, which obviously had a bad effect on him, as was made clear in the article.

She certainly had cause to have her son removed from her home. I just hope her son is able to adjust and adapt, and that things improve for both of them.

When an NT teenager is violent is that the dark side of parenting? It seems that for non-autistic teenagers we have a list of things to blame – drugs, the school system, parents, bad company, the police, social services and so on. However, once the Dx is there we look no further.

Of course the advocates then arrive to twist the violence to serve their own purposes.

I popped your first comment free of the spam filter, and edited your second comment. Let me know if that’s right.

People with schizophrenia are far more likely to harm themselves than be violent toward the public. Violence is not a symptom of schizophrenia.

News and entertainment media tend to link mental illnesses including schizophrenia to criminal violence. Most people with schizophrenia, however, are not violent toward others but are withdrawn and prefer to be left alone. Drug or alcohol abuse raises the risk of violence in people with schizophrenia, particularly if the illness is untreated, but also in people who have no mental illness.