Hard to believe that it is almost a year since a Germanwings aircraft was deliberately crashed into the French Alps by pilot Andreas Lubitz. 150 people died that day and in the weeks that followed I was very concerned about some of the more lurid headlines that were emerging about Lubitz’s mental health. I understood the concerns, of course, but there was more than a suggestion that this was the type of behaviour that could be expected of pretty well anyone with a mental health condition. Worse than that, no one with any type of mental health condition could possibly be trusted to fly a plane, or carry out any other kind of job that involved a high degree of responsibility.
My loyal reader will know that on the mental health front, I have my issues. It can be the most debilitating condition but it is important to recognise that like we are all different from one another, so are our mental ailments. I am lucky in that I am generally able to get by with the minimum fuss and distraction. We are not all so lucky. I would regard myself as relative normal, whatever that means. I do not feel I am more of a danger to anyone else because of my illness and medication; in short, I manage. I try to be honest and open about my own black dog because a) it helps me and b) my ‘coming out’ helps others to understands their own problems.
The stigma of mental health means that many people are not confident enough to talk about it. It suits some people to keep things to themselves but it hurts others by bottling up their feelings. The Sun’s headline at the time – ‘Madman in the cockpit’ – probably did not encourage people to speak out. The vast majority, almost all of us, who don’t enjoy the best mental health are no more inclined to crash a plane than anyone else.
Lubitz was clearly a very sick man when on that fateful day in March 2015 he locked himself in the flight deck and flew the plane into the Alps. Indeed, it now transpires that he had been by 41 doctors in the years leading to the tragedy and had only recently been referred for psychiatric treatment. There has been concern that this information was not passed onto the airline but, and here I am guessing, would patient confidentiality come into it? Obviously, we don’t know enough about the case but you would have expected a doctor who found someone incapable of carrying out a particular function, like flying a plane, to have transmitted the information.
I hate this ‘madman’ type stuff used by the tabloids, which reminds me of their ‘Bonkers Bruno’ headline when the former boxer Frank Bruno was sectioned under the mental health act. They would never disparage someone suffering from cancer with such trivial language so why use it for mental health?
Sadly, the stigma of mental health still exists and this terrible tragedy – and that’s what it is – just reminds us how far we have to go in explaining that people who suffer from mental health illnesses are as ‘normal’ as everyone else.
