New details about Adam Lanza’s mental health and his treatment have emerged in the final Connecticut report on the Newtown shootings, disclosing that he was seen at the Yale Child Study Center in his early teens and was prescribed the antidepressant Celexa, the Hartford Courant reports. Included are emails between his father, Peter, and Kathleen Koenig, a clinical nurse specialist in psychiatry at the Yale Child Study Center, as well as an evaluation by” Dr. Paul Fox, a former Connecticut psychiatrist now living in New Zealand. Details of a three-hour exam that Adam Lanza had in 2006 with another Yale Child psychiatrist, Dr. Robert A. King, were also released.
King said that Adam Lanza “displayed a profound autism spectrum disorder with rigidity, isolation and a lack of comprehension of ordinary social interaction and communications.” Lanza was also diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder. King told police, “My concern was that the shooter’s social isolation and withdrawal was increasing.” Koenig said Lanza’s obsessive compulsive disorder “severely limited his ability to lead a normal, well-adjusted life.” She described him as “emotionally paralyzed” and said that he would participate in multiple daily rituals like repeated hand washing and showering and obsessively changing the blue polo shirts and khaki pants that he wore exclusively — behavior that forced his mother to do up to three loads of laundry a day. Koenig prescribed Celexa and recommended that he have follow-up visits at her office. Nancy Lanza did not appear to take her advice, Koenig said.