Act of the Germanwings pilot: an act of violence or an act of desperation?

“What happened in the French Alps has the potential to create a new stigma for mental illness, to increase paranoia and fear, to develop the idea that the mentally ill are the most dangerous and cunning lunatics of bad paperback thrillers. And this is very bad for all of us — simply because none of us, brothers, is in any way immune from depression, the most common of all mental disorders. Every fifth person on Earth experiences some serious mental disorder at least once in a lifetime. Depression, psychosis, eating disorder, panic attacks, or generalized anxiety disorder. We are not insured.

The most important thing to remember is that depressed people are not violent. If Lubitz really was depressed, then his actions were not an act of violence. They were an act of desperation. Yes, this does not make it easier for the families of the victims. Yes, an accidental senseless death and the same loss brings no less pain. However, it is important to understand: a depressed person experiences such tremendous mental pain that death looks like a release, an attempt to end the pain. Yes, other lives may not be taken into account. This is how a disturbed psyche works. A depressed mother may not feed a hungry child. For days. Weeks. Even when he’s screaming from hunger. Depressed women speak of petrification and lack of feeling where there used to be a great love for children and the ability to take care of them, even falling down from fatigue. We are not talking about the fact that she deliberately deprives the child of food and care — against the backdrop of intense mental suffering, the hunger of the child ceases to matter. This is not aggression, not evil will, this is a form of deficiency, mental disability.

Nobody expects Nick Vujicic to dance the Krakowiak. It is pointless to expect a depressed person to be able to care for or take others into account. When you’re depressed, it’s hard to even take care of yourself. Brush your teeth. Get out of bed. I remember how, during practice at the Scientific Center for Mental Health of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Professor Alexander Tkhostov showed us a patient, and, according to his custom, demanded a “blind” diagnosis from us — that is, to establish a diagnosis without looking into the history of the disease, only on the basis of a clinical interview . The patient, a woman in her forties, complained of a depressive circle — here and depression, and low mood, and fatigue, and unwillingness to do anything. Most of the students gleefully diagnosed a depressive disorder, much to the outrage of the emotional professor. “How can you not see it! thundered Alexander Shamilevich. “The patient’s face says that she is not depressed!” «How is it written?» – timidly squeaked one of the cowardly students. «Yes, lipstick! No depressed patient will ever put on makeup!” And rightly so, the woman prettified herself before meeting with the students and painted her lips with bright red lipstick. When you’re depressed, you won’t paint your lips because it’s pointless.

If we could come up with magic pills that could treat any mental disorder, including schizophrenia (and people with schizophrenia are sometimes aggressive towards others), then the number of violent acts in the world would be reduced by a small amount — only 4%. The remaining 96% of violent acts are committed by mentally healthy people. There are other statistics: people suffering from mental disorders are much more likely to become victims of violent crime. Mentally ill patients are ten times more likely to experience various forms of violence than you and I, healthy people. If we consider mental illness to be the cause of the plane crash, we stigmatize those people suffering from various forms of mental disorders who are socially adapted and live fully. Stigmatization has never saved anyone from anything. The stigmatized mentally ill will stop being treated — they will hide from medical care so as not to be deprived of their rights. Remember the happy Soviet reality that so many now yearn for? Do you know that a teenager who attempted suicide with the help of pills in Soviet times was immediately registered not only with psychiatric records (difficulties in entering a university, the inability to obtain a driver’s license), but also with drug addiction as a potential drug addict? What we have achieved in this way is an increase in the number of teenage suicides, not to mention teenage drug addiction. If we start to see people with psychiatric diagnoses as potential culprits in plane crashes, we are depriving them of the opportunity to lead a normal, ordinary life.

• Why is madness scaring us?

Recently, I caught a discussion about the crash on CNN, which I don’t usually watch. Experts relished the topic of medical secrecy in aviation: in particular, in the United States, a pilot is required to undergo an annual medical examination, which is not a requirement in German aviation. In the US, a pilot is required to report any illness, mental or physical, under threat of a fine of $250, while in Germany there is no such requirement. However, fragments of a letter from a doctor are reported, in which Lubitz qualifies as unfit for work — something like a sick leave. Why did Lubitz tear it up and not present it to the authorities? Most likely, because he understood that he might never take off again.

The question of whether to change the rules regarding medical confidentiality in the workplace for pilots is a very delicate one. It seems like a simple solution to require pilots to report if they suddenly get depressed or have an anxiety disorder. In practice, this will mean that people with the slightest signs of mental disorders will be “filtered out” just in case, that is, left on the ground, and pilots will massively hide signs of mental illness from doctors.

There is such a well-known Minnesota Personality Inventory, MMPI. In the 1990s, recruiters and HR departments found out about its existence, and for some reason they began to massively use this clinical questionnaire when selecting candidates for work. Anyone who showed a «suspicious» profile was not taken. The result was the appearance on the Internet of a mass of websites with a detailed analysis of the questions of the questionnaire and the «preparation» of potential candidates in such a way that, filling out the questionnaire, they get a «prosperous» profile. The candidates simply memorized the correct answers and went to please the personnel department with the specter of their own adequacy. Is this what we want to achieve in civil aviation? So that pilots, people who are disciplined and efficient, memorize answers, hiding what is really happening to them? The result will be unequivocal: aircraft will begin to crash more often.

In many Western publications, journalists point out yet another detail. We latched on to Lubitz’s depression because he’s white. We cannot call him a terrorist and a mass murderer. If Lubitz was a Muslim, a native of an Arab country, would we believe in his depression so easily? Or would they look for other reasons, considering him a cold-blooded murderer of one and a half hundred innocent people? And this is also a very interesting twist. Among terrorists of a certain sort, «suicide bombers» — those who blow themselves up, killing people around — there are not so many cold-blooded killers and psychopaths. More than 40% of this population are deeply depressed boys and girls. Recruiters of such people are advised, first of all, to consider «sad» people as potential candidates. A 2010 study by Brian Glyn Williams, an expert on Islamic culture, at the University of Massachusetts (Dartmouth) showed these results — not killers, but depressed people. And not just depressed people, but specially prepared, used, confused. Yes, the minds of mentally ill people can be manipulated. Do not rush to panic or accusation — your mind can also do it, it happens daily.

Thus, the Germanwings tragedy is not indicative of poorly managed medical controls in German civil aviation — increased controls are likely to exacerbate the problem, not solve it. There is no need to defame the mentally ill — the more carefully we treat them, the safer and more humane our society will be. And, most importantly, we don’t know Lubitz’s diagnosis. Depression is only one of the hypotheses. We will never know the truth about this tragedy. Despite the fact that it seems important to us to find out the answer and understand the causes of the tragedy, it seems important to find a place for Lover in the system that exists in our head — a cold-blooded villain killer, an impulsive psycho killer, a victim of illness or circumstances — this is far from the most important thing. What is much more important is to mourn the dead and deal with your own fears about it. Encountering someone else’s madness, in this case, madness that led to senseless deaths, always causes fear of one’s own madness. God, what if this happens to me, what if I go crazy like that too?! the unconscious whispers to us. Hence the anger, denunciations, aggression towards someone who will no longer be able to answer our questions about why he did it. Madness is an unpredictable quantity and a particle, the carrier of which is each of us. Don’t forget about it. Fear often pushes us to try to increase control, even completely pointless, because this creates the feeling that «we are doing at least something», and this reduces anxiety. Do we want to «do at least something» senseless, which will lead to a defeat in the rights and «disappearance from the radar» of hundreds of thousands of people with symptoms of mental disorders? Ask yourself this question.»