There are a number of things we think we know about Adam Lanza, the Newtown, Connecticut 20-year-old, who last Friday murdered his mother, then shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School and killed 20 first-graders and six adults before turning a gun on himself. We’ve been told, by a former classmate, that he was “weird.”  We’ve been told, by a family friend, that he played a lot of violent video games. And we’ve also been told by such sources that he had a “developmental disorder,” that some say was Asperger’s Syndrome. (MORE: Why Did Adam Lanza Target A School?) From this, a narrative has emerged of a troubled young man, induced into violence by his preferred choice of media, and failed by an inadequate mental health system. This narrative has caught on so successfully that, as of Wednesday, a Gallup poll found far more Americans believing that events like the Newtown tragedy could be avoided through increased federal spending on mental health screening and services than by banning the sale of assault weapons. And yet, in truth, we have virtually no hard facts to back up this storyline. How often did Lanza play the most violent games? How did he feel about them? How did they affect him? Did they desensitize him to violence or provoke blood lust? We don’t know, and most likely never will. (MORE: Is There A Backlash Against Children With Autism?) Did he really have Asperger’s? Was he diagnosed with anything in addition to the “developmental disorder” — or was that just a palatable-sounding phrase his family and family friends used to avoid invoking scarier, more threatening terms like “mental illness”? We don’t know what lay behind the extremely inward-turned behavior his classmates saw, or the murderous violence that erupted last week. Was it extreme, toxic anxiety? Paranoia? Voices? Righteous rage? We may never know. We don’t know that Lanza’s crime represents a failure of our “system” of mental health care in America, as has been said countless times this week, because we don’t know what, if any, mental … Continue reading Sandy Hook Shooting: The Speculation About Adam Lanza Must Stop