Adam Lanza and Mental Illness
BERMAN: All right, welcome back, everyone. For the first time since that heartbreaking day in Newtown, Connecticut, the father of the Sandy Hook school shooter, he's talking about his son. And I've got to say, the words, they're just - they're heartbreaking.</s>PEREIRA: At times it's difficult to read. Peter Lanza tells "The New Yorker" that Adam would have killed him in a heartbeat. And he said this about his son, quote, "You can't get any more evil. How much do I beat up myself about the fact that he's my son? A lot." The magazine reporter spoke about that interview in New York early this morning.</s>ANDREW SOLOMON, NEW YORKER MAGAZINE: He wishes that he could go back in time and fix what went wrong. He's a kind, decent man and he's horrified that his own child could have caused this destruction. Whenever Adam was being strange or peculiar, he thought it was just the Asperger's. And he didn't look past it. But Adam saw a huge number of psychiatrists and psychologists and none of them detected hints of violence.</s>BERMAN: We want to talk about this with psychologist Jeff Gardere and our very own Ashleigh Banfield, the anchor of "LEGAL VIEW". Ashleigh covered the shootings in Newtown when it happened; Ashleigh also lives in Connecticut, not far from where this all happened. Jeff, I do want to start with you here because there's so many lines, so many statements in this article which jump off the page. Peter Lanza says, "You can't mourn for the little boy he once was." When you first read this, what did you sense?</s>JEFF GARDERE, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST: Well, that this young man, Adam Lanza, had been transformed from an innocent boy who may have had issues with Asperger's and was dealing with that and parents who were dedicated to him to now someone who was uncontrollable, someone who did not want to admit that he had issues, someone whose Asperger's might have even masked a deeper schizophrenia and depression. He was no longer, Adam Lanza as a young adult, was no longer this little boy that Peter, his father, adored, loved, dedicated his life to.</s>PEREIRA: And you can hear in the article as he writes, which is so interesting, almost that that transformation from little boy to this really, really troubled young man. I get a sense that he feels he could have done more. But he also feels that he didn't see - and he says it right here in the article - he didn't see violence in this young man. On the page, it seems like it's screaming that he was going to be violent.</s>GARDERE: What I admire about Peter is that he does take responsibility. He does say, as you're saying, that there is more that he could have done. He should have recognized the signs more. And I guess that's for us as parents now who deal with the issues to have this sort of a learning curve. He says that he wishes he could trade places with the parents who lost their children on that fateful day. So this is a man who has survivor's guilt as far as the fact that he's still around. He would trade places in a minute.</s>PEREIRA: Ashleigh, I want to ask you about this because I know you live not too far - you're a resident of Connecticut, you live not too far from some of these people and have had a chance to talk to a lot of the families. I, when I read this, I thought to myself, there are going to be people that are going to vilify him as the parent. He should have done more. How dare he. How dare he. Is that the sense that you got in that community from talking to some of the people?</s>ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR, "LEGAL VIEW": You know, I got the sense -- this is one of the hardest bookings that I've come across, to try to get Peter Lanza to speak. He lives nine minutes away from me. My friend lives on the same street as Peter Lanza. And it was one of those situations where everybody kind of felt like he was as much a victim in all of this as everyone else. Look, he lost his ex-wife. He lost his child. His child is one of the greatest monsters in the history of America. He has met with the families of the other children who were killed. He's bearing an extraordinary amount of guilt. No one knows what the shoes of Peter Lanza are like. And I think there are many who identify at least with the extraordinary grief that man is going through.</s>BERMAN: It's hard to talk about it but there are fair questions here. I mean, he did not talk to his son for two full years. He talks about this in the article. Would it have made a difference, Jeff, had he just gone over to the house? Is he culpable in some way? Are parents ever culpable?</s>BANFIELD: Well, he said he tried. He said he was rebuffed.</s>BERMAN: Well, no, he said his ex-wife told him not to come. She didn't stop him. He didn't knock on the door and she didn't throw him out.</s>GARDERE: And I think that's what's going on here. That is part of the guilt that perhaps even though he was reading messages from Nancy, his ex-wife, kind of like, "Stay away, I've got this, I've got this under control," which she didn't. When he knew that his son, Adam, was actually on gun ranges, that there were guns in the house, that that's the way that she felt she could connect with him, he knew something was fundamentally wrong. But I think with all parents, and we have to put a human face on this, with parents who see something like this going on with their beloved child, they go into denial mode. Or they just stay away because they feel they can't control it.</s>BANFIELD: Someone's got to tamp down those who want to vilify this man. In hindsight, this is a breeze.</s>BERMAN: Is it vilifying here? I do think you have to ask these questions.</s>BANFIELD: But let's not forget - prior to this shooting, who was Adam Lanza? He was just a troubled kid. He wasn't a homicidal maniac who everyone was ignoring. That's really important in this equation to remember. Peter Lanza hadn't seen his grown son for two years. I can name you untold people that I work with who haven't seen their children in five years. And he was not a homicidal maniac in anyone's opinion, in doctors. And by the way, Peter said in this piece, "How could I live this close to New York City where there are the best medical professionals in the world and no one saw this?"</s>PEREIRA: To that end, Jeff, I think there's no argument we need to be doing more in terms of getting people who need it the right access to mental health in this country. Because we've talked about -</s>GARDERE: That's right.</s>PEREIRA: We don't even like to talk about it in polite company. That's the reality; it's a terrible reality. And when you have a family that's in the middle of the divorce, which I think further complicated this situation - not vilify people that are divorced - but it further complicated the communication between the two parents -</s>GARDERE: That's right, not having the two parents.</s>PEREIRA: And then Nancy also didn't want to admit that things weren't OK. And that was a real problem here. She was alone, essentially/</s>GARDERE: And the major issue that we're seeing with young people who have schizophrenia, who may, perhaps, have some sort of an autism spectrum disorder. And by the way, they're not violent individuals.</s>PEREIRA: No, they're not.</s>GARDERE: It wasn't that part of him that acted out. We believe it was more of the schizophrenia. The cases are virtually impossible. You cannot --</s>PEREIRA: No two are alike, right?</s>GARDERE: That's right. And you cannot get the children into hospitals when they need to be in hospitals.</s>BANFIELD: And children. We're not talking child - we are not talking about a child in Adam Lanza. We are talking about an adult who was being monitored.</s>GARDERE: A young adult.</s>BANFIELD: A young adult but an adult who's being monitored by his mother. There's only so much you can do forcing yourself upon a child, let alone a grown child.</s>GARDERE: And he was in total denial. He didn't want to admit that he may have had some sort of autism, didn't want to admit that he might have schizophrenia. So there it made the treatment even much more complicated because he just couldn't stay on medication, nor did he want to take it.</s>PEREIRA: That's where mental illness is always so much more tricky. When you have diabetes or cancer, you can see the symptoms, you can know how to treat it. This is very - this is a very different --</s>BANFIELD: By the way, did you all see in this piece the warning that he gave to parents across America?</s>BERMAN: He said he wants everyone to know that it could happen to them.</s>BANFIELD: Terrifying, really terrifying.</s>BERMAN: It's the pain that really jumps off the page here. And we'll leave you with one last thing here. He says he will never tell anyone whether he gave his son, Adam Lanza, a funeral. Guys, Jeff Gardere, Ashleigh Banfield, thank you so much for being here with us. Great discussion.</s>PEREIRA: Ahead @ THIS HOUR, here's a question -- is television ruining your life? Not because it's bad, no, no, no. Because it's so good. John Berman, is there too much good TV out there these days?</s>BERMAN: In addition to our show, we're talking about here. And here's the question for you, if you knew you were going to get Alzheimer's disease, would you tell your girlfriend? Would you tell your boss? Think about this. There's a medical breakthrough that raises serious questions for all of us.