ENOUGH!

By: Carol Maxym, Ph.D.

ENOUGH!

Enough of the articles and news reports like this one, http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/lufthansa-not-required-to-report-lubitz-s-depression-company-says-1.3022632. 

....and this one,http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3026640/Lufthansa-did-not-tell-aviation-regulator-Germanwings-pilot-Andreas-Lubitz-previously-struggled-depression.html

I’ve refrained from commenting about the purported psychological basis to the tragic decision of a German Wings pilot.  And now I just can’t be silent any longer.  Enough!  Enough of this gabble about depression.  Three points are really clear:

1.    Depression was not what made the co-pilot make the decision he did to crash the plane into a mountainside.

2.    We will never, ever, ever know what made the co-pilot make the decision he made.

3.    There is absolutely no way ever to make certain that someone doesn't do something horrible and evil and cruel to other people again.

Therefore, let’s stop the nonsense speculation.  Let’s look at this frenzy of silliness masquerading as psychology, psychotherapy, psychiatry and see it for what it most certainly is.  Silliness.  Silliness that mainly just sounds like a pharm rep trying to sell his new pill to a psychiatrist, nurse practitioner or other person who can sell (ooops, prescribe) pills.  Silliness because it perverts the discussion of the human mind, the human spirit, human emotions into a pseudo crossword puzzle of pretend psychological knowledge and understanding.  This is NOT what psychology is about.

I mean why are we speculating about depression instead of evil ? 

The narrative seems to go sort of this way:  Andreas Lubitz once “had” depression and therefore somehow his depression had something to do with/was his motive for his decision to murder a plane load of innocent people.

However, we are also told that depression is “treatable,” and that we mustn’t stigmatize the mentally ill (are depressed people mentally ill or are they depressed?  At what point does “depression” become mental illness?  Ooops.  Mental refers to cognitive processes of the mind and depression is emotional—it’s a long standing verbal problem with trying to talk thoughtfully about these issues.

Then we get back to that one pesky [of 155 known] neurotransmitter (Serotonin) that somehow drives us all to smiley or frowny faces on a daily basis—or a disorder basis.. But I’m not clear about the stigmatizing of “mentally ill” people because they are just like us (with 14% of the population diagnosed as depressed and that supposedly is under-reported) they are certainly like many of us.  By the way, have you ever felt depressed? 

So then we must get to noticing that this looks like the worst epidemic of illness since the Spanish Flu outbreak in 1918-19 that killed more people than World War 1 and is the worst recorded epidemic in recorded history.  And if 14%+ of the population has depression and depression (though treatable but apparently not completely or not over a long period of time), then what about bus drivers, train engineers, taxi drivers, cooks, ship captains—other people in their cars who could act from their not fully treated depression and do something evil.  I mean, mustn’t we check to see that they never had or were treated for depression?  Or treated for evilness?  Because any one of these people could choose to do an act similar to Andreas Lubitz.  Maybe we need to screen everyone everyday, just to be very, very sure. 

Maybe we need to consider the possibility that his man was insane and/or evil.

What about the shooting at the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado?  Maybe he was depressed?  Now you know that sounds ridiculous because it is.  Why is that ridiculous but opining on and on about the possible, once-treated [but not successfully] depression of Andreas Lubitz makes sense?

I go back to my professor in graduate school who used to say, “Since no one claims to be a physicist because they know that gravity is why an apple falls from a tree, why does everyone think they understand psychology?  Listen, pilots:  I don’t tell you how to fly a plane; please stop talking pseudo-psychology.

Now all this muddle about depression and mental illness and stigmatization and treatable depression and once having taken medication…it really makes you want to think about it and notice how absurd we are [well, the media] as we try to understand that which will always and necessarily exceed the horizons of our imagination.