Internalizing

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Dr. Coplan maps the connections between social rejection, internalizing behavior, and suicide risk in persons with autism spectrum disorder. Internalizing behavior usually does not trigger criminal offending, but it can be the prequel to violent externalizing behavior.

The British psychiatrist Lorna Wing passed away last month, after a long career dedicated to bettering the lives of persons with ASD, including her own daughter. It was Lorna Wing who in 1981 coined the term “Asperger Syndrome.” This blog post is dedicated to her memory and legacy.

Here is the list of factors Dr. Wing enumerated as contributors to crime committed by persons on the spectrum (I have re-ordered the items):
1. Assumption that the person’s own needs supersede all other considerations
2. Lack of awareness of wrongdoing
3. Intellectual interest (what Asperger himself called “Autistic acts of malice”)
4. Pursuit of “special” interests (objects, people)
5. Vulnerability
6. Cry for help
7. Hostility towards family
8. Hyperarousal
9. Revenge
In our last post on the subject of ASD and crime, I introduced the term “innocent offending” to describe criminal behavior stemming from the combination of obsessive interests and lack of social awareness (Items 1-4 in Wing’s list). Here, I’ve added another pathway to the diagram, this time leading from social rejection to internalizing behavior.

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Pathways To Crime. Asperger Syndrome and Crime.

Dr. Coplan emphasizes the importance of being able to identify those individuals with High Functioning Autism or Asperger Syndrome who are at increased risk for committing violent crime, in order to reduce the potential for a catastrophic outcome.

The consensus among the world’s leading researchers is that “a small yet significant number of primarily higher functioning people with ASD will engage in unlawful behavior,” due to the combined effect of “generic forensic risk factors” plus “factors more specific to the autism phenotype.” (Woodbury-Smith 2014)

How often this happens is unknown, although it is probably uncommon. There has been no “explosion” in violent crime over the past 20 years in parallel with the hundred-fold increase in diagnosed cases of ASD. This is very reassuring, but the challenge remains to identify those few individuals with ASD / AS who are at greatest risk, in order to reduce the potential for catastrophic outcome. Read the rest of this entry »