Preface

Autism Spectrum Disorder is a neurodevelopment disorder. Neurodevelopment disorders are among the most important disorders in psychiatry and now also include Intellectual Disabili‐ ty, ADHD, Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia. There is a great deal of overlap between these disorders and not surprisingly, these often co-occur or are co-morbid. Indeed ASD was origi‐ nally called Autistic Psychopathy and the first chapter of this new book suggests that this should be brought back under the title of Criminal Autistic Psychopathy for the small group of persons with Autism that commit crimes. While the global number of school shootings, mass killers or serial killers is relatively small compared to the total global population, the effect of some of these events on any one country or a number of countries can be significant. In many of these situations warning signs have been missed. Hopefully with the material on this book, this will happen less often in future.

Autism Spectrum Disorder is an extraordinarily complex disorder from almost every perspec‐ tive with more than one neurodevelopment disorder, occurring at the same time in the same person. Unfortunately, often only one disorder is identified and the other disorders are missed, which leads to poor treatment and poor outcome, as each disorder needs to be treated in its own right. There are also overlapping and distinct aetiological factors occurring between the neurodevelopment disorders, which greatly complicates research. Identifying genuinely discreet diagnostic categories which is necessary for research is becoming more difficult and complexity of this is well illustrated in this book. Because of the current problems with diag‐ nostic categories American Psychiatric Association DSM V and indeed the proposed classifica‐ tion for ICD XI means that alternative criteria are being put forward called the Research Domain Criteria. No quick research breakthrough is likely on a par with the Higgs Bosum research breakthrough recently. Nevertheless, progress can be expected on some aspects of the ASD spectrum issues. Despite a lack of major breakthrough at present, at the research level, progress continues to be made at the therapeutic level and particularly for children under the age of 2 and in the immediate years following.

There is no doubt that the best outcome comes where the research described in this book is initiated as early as possible. While there is no prospect of a "miracle cure" and discussions of this idea occur at a religious level and are most unhelpful from a professional psychiatric sci‐ entific level, very good progress has been made with persons with autism and in general as described in this book. This book describes issues in relation to Autism from the research lev‐ el, the intervention level and the parents level. This book will bring the reader up-to-date in relation to the current status of Autism Spectrum Disorders at this point in time.

> **Prof. Michael Fitzgerald** Department of Psychiatry, Trinity College Dublin (TCD) Ireland

**New Diagnostic Subcategory - Criminal Autistic Psychopathy**

**Chapter 1**

**Autism and School Shootings — Overlap of Autism (Asperger's Syndrome) and General Psychopathy**

Michael Fitzgerald

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/58882
