The appalling news from Connecticut, USA has sent a huge wave
of shock and disbelief around the globe. No fewer than 28 victims died in a gun
attack, 27 of them at Sandy Hook Elementary School and 20 of those, little children
who had barely had chance to live yet.
Of course there is necessarily a great deal of speculation
and supposition in these early news reports as people try to comprehend what
might have driven a human being to commit such an atrocity. What could his
motive possibly have been?
I don’t (as part of my own speculation and supposition)
believe there was one as such, in the rational and logical sense of the word
anyway. That is because there have been several (early and anonymous) reports
that the alleged killer, Adam Lanza, had been diagnosed with a personality
disorder.
Personality disorders are psychological disorders of the
mind, often arising from prolonged trauma during childhood and adolescence. The
most commonly diagnosed of these disorders used to be called Borderline
Personality Disorder (BPD). It was called ‘borderline’ not because it is
borderline as to whether or not it is a disorder at all, but because it sits on
the border between being neurological and psychological in nature. In other words, it is partly 'wired' into the brain.
We all have an ancient response to perceived danger, commonly
called ‘fight or flee.’ To this day, we will either run from threats, or fight
them. Sometimes we might ‘freeze’ too. In people who are unfortunate enough to
suffer from personality disorders, this response is often exaggerated. They
also have a particular ‘black-and-white’ perception whereby people or events
seem either ‘all good’ or ‘all bad’ – a rather dangerous combination.
And what might turn a dangerous combination into a
catastrophic one is the phenomenon of ‘dissociation.’ This is where reality
switches off for a while and the individual drops back into instinctive and
impulsive behaviour, sometimes with high-level thinking and perception.
When they flee, especially if they dissociate, they might
literally run, putting themselves into dangerous or difficult situations. Or
they may run to alcohol or drugs or the pain of self-harm, or they may commit
suicide. When they are dissociated and fight...well, we are just watching on
the news reports what might happen then.
That is why I noted above that there were 28 victims in
total. Of course that is no comfort to the parents and friends of the dead and
injured, or, of course, to the injured themselves. Theirs is a pain beyond
comprehension. Nor is it an excuse.
That is not to say that those who have disordered
personalities are likely to be dangerous. They are much more likely to hurt or
kill themselves than others. But there are people with emotionally unstable
personality disorders of the impulsive type, who under certain circumstances
can be very dangerous indeed.
Unfortunately, mental health service providers around the
world often neglect the treatment of personality disorders. They are seen as
persistent and difficult or expensive to treat despite the fact that they cause
misery for millions. In the UK, many believe that psychiatrists deliberately do
not diagnose personality disorders because that will then lead to the right of
patients to access treatments (Dialectical Behaviour Therapies, or DBT) which
are expensive to provide.
It really is an outrage.
