CNN School Shooting and Bi-Polar Disorder

I had planned to blog about Bi-Polar disorder, when one of my readers, Ernest, gave me a link to a story from CNN. It is a story I can completely relate to. Several years ago a mother discovered that her son was plotting to shoot some students in his high school and idolized the shooters in the Columbine shooting.

One of the things mentioned in the article was that the young man had been diagnosed with Bi-Polar disorder. This is something we are all too familiar with. Sammy has carried the diagnosis for several years and records indicate that his birth mother has Bi-Polar disorder as well.

I was talking with Julia off line and we were discussing Bi-Polar disorder. I said that with kids who have Fetal Alcohol symptoms, Bi-Polar does not always present the same as the “typical” symptoms.

Most of us think or feel that when people have Bi-Polar disorder, that they are either manic, meaning that they are happy, giggly, euphoric or something along those lines, or that they are deeply depressed.

With Sammy, and many other kids I know with both Bi-Polar disorder and fetal alcohol problems, it doesn’t present that way at all. Instead of the euphoric manic episodes, our kids have violent and aggressive manic episodes. This sounds like the boy in the article.

This boy was adopted at the age of 4.5 from a Bulgaria orphanage. The photo in the newspaper article is not clear enough for me to see if he has the facial characteristics of Fetal Alcohol Effects, but I wouldn’t doubt it. The behaviors his mother describes are so similar to Sammy it’s frightening.

There is one quote from the mother that really stuck out to me:

“People thought he was just the greatest kid in the world. Very polite, well-mannered, caring,” Elaine Sonnen remembered. “At home, he could be anywhere from just a really helpful kid to a monster. A terrifying monster.”

This is how I feel about Sammy most days, and falls in line with a conversation we had with my mother-in-law today. We were discussing Sammy’s lack of impulse control, lack of cause and effect thinking, and lack of remorse. She said it sounded like he had the makings of a sociopath and she has seen some of his issues. We told that the diagnosis for Sammy is leaning toward sociopath. I imagine this mother has had similar conversations about her son. I can completely empathize with her because I may be in her situation some day.

Thankfully this mother had open communication with her son and he said something about his plans and she caught it. She was able to stop him before he hurt or killed someone. This young man openly threatened his mother when he was only six years old, and continued to do so as he continued to grow.

I’m not sure if this mom is crazy or brave and loving. She allows her son to spend the night in her home, but alarms his room. I’m not sure I’d be doing that. I admire her and her son for speaking out and trying to help other kids who may have these feelings. Her strength is amazing.

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