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.
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.
