FILE - This undated identification file photo provided Wednesday, April 3, 2013, by Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, Conn., shows former student Adam Lanza, who carried out the shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012. A Connecticut agency that investigated the background of the socially isolated, violence-obsessed man, Lanza, who carried out the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School is issuing a report Friday, Nov. 21, 2014, on his mental health and educational history. The Office of Child Advocate investigates all child deaths in the state for lessons on prevention. (AP Photo/Western Connecticut State University, File) The Associated Press
FILE - This Dec. 14, 2012 aerial file photo shows officials standing outside of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. A Connecticut agency that investigated the background of the socially isolated, violence-obsessed man who carried out the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School is issuing a report Friday, Nov. 21, 2014, on his mental health and educational history. In the case of the Newtown shooting, it said its report will focus on the gunman, Adam Lanza, and how his 'personal, educational, mental health and medical trajectory can inform public health systems.' (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, file)The Associated Press
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - A new report asks whether the race and affluence of Adam Lanza's family influenced decisions about how to care for his mental health problems in the years before he committed the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.
Among the findings in the report, which was released Friday by the state office of Child Advocate, is that Lanza's parents and educators contributed to his social isolation by accommodating - and not confronting - his difficulties engaging with the world.
The report said recommendations from Yale psychologists that he be medicated and undergo rigorous treatment as a child for anxiety and other conditions were rejected by his mother, who eventually took him out of school.
'Is the community more reluctant to intervene and more likely to provide deference to the parental judgment and decision-making of white, affluent parents than those caregivers who are poor or minority?' the report asks. 'Would (Adam Lanza's) caregivers' reluctance to maintain him in school or a treatment program have gone under the radar if he were a child of color?'
Lanza's father is a financial services executive. The son and his mother lived in an exclusive neighborhood in the wealthy bedroom community, 70 miles north of Manhattan.
Research has found that upper-middle-class parents are far more likely to be resistant, defensive and even litigious when presented with treatment options suggested by school service providers, said Suniya Luthar, a professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, who has written extensively on the topic of affluence and mental health.
Deferring to those parents can have grave consequences, allowing nascent problems to escalate to serious and sometimes dangerous levels, she said.
'Even though some of these parents can be very intimidating, schools need to hang tough,' she said. 'If there is a psychologist, a teacher or a social worker who believes this child is headed for deep trouble, they need to hang tough.'
The report concluded that Lanza's autism spectrum disorder and other psychiatric problems did not cause or lead directly to the massacre.
But it found that his 'severe and deteriorating internalized mental health problems' when combined with a preoccupation with violence, and access to deadly weapons, 'proved a recipe for mass murder.'
Lanza killed his mother then shot his way into the Newtown school on Dec. 14, 2012, and gunned down 20 children and six educators before committing suicide.
Lanza's obsessions with firearms, death and mass shootings have been documented by police files, and investigators previously concluded the motive for the shootings may never be known.
But in exploring what could have been done differently, the new report honed in on his mother, Nancy Lanza, who backed her son's resistance to medication and from the 10th grade on kept him at home, where he was surrounded by an arsenal of firearms and spent long hours playing violent video games.
'Mrs. Lanza's approach to try and help him was to actually shelter him and protect him and pull him further away from the world, and that in turn turned out to be a very tragic mistake,' said Julian Ford, one of the report's authors, at a news conference.
Entities 0 Name: Lanza Count: 7 1 Name: Sandy Hook Elementary School Count: 5 2 Name: Adam Lanza Count: 4 3 Name: Conn. Count: 3 4 Name: Newtown Count: 3 5 Name: Connecticut Count: 2 6 Name: Western Connecticut State University Count: 1 7 Name: Danbury Count: 1 8 Name: AP Photo\/Western Connecticut State University Count: 1 9 Name: Associated Press FILE Count: 1 10 Name: Nancy Lanza Count: 1 11 Name: AP Count: 1 12 Name: Suniya Luthar Count: 1 13 Name: HARTFORD Count: 1 14 Name: Yale Count: 1 15 Name: Office of Child Advocate Count: 1 16 Name: AP Photo\/Julio Cortez Count: 1 17 Name: Julian Ford Count: 1 18 Name: Manhattan Count: 1 19 Name: Arizona State University Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/1v4w3zh Title: Schools helped Lanza's mother 'appease' him, state report says Description: Adam Lanza's parents and educators contributed to his social isolation in the years before he carried out the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre by accommodating -- and not confronting -- his difficulties engaging with the world, according to a state report issued Friday.