Whenever a major disaster occurs, it’s a perfectly understandable human reaction that we need to find a reason behind it. However, trying to make sense of a terrible situation is one thing, and falling over ourselves to jump to ridiculous conclusions is quite another. And quite frankly, the UK press should be downright ashamed of themselves today. The way in which they’ve covered the news that Germanwings pilot Andreas Lubitz may have had depression is abhorrent.
P. Etchells è un socio-biologo
P. Etchells è un socio-biologo
“Madman in cockpit” was the Sun’s effort. “Why on Earth was he allowed to fly?” asked the Daily Mail. In case you’re wondering what the link that’s trying to be made is, the Daily Mirror is here to help: “Killer pilot suffered from depression”. It’s difficult to know where to start with such breathless ignorance about mental health issues, but I’ll give it a go anyway. Again.
We’ll likely never know Lubitz’s state of mind while he was in flight
The crash investigation is still in a very early stage, which means that a lot of information being thrown around about what actually happened is pure conjecture. At any rate, we’ll probably never know what was actually going on in the cockpit, because no one survived the crash. It is therefore irresponsible to make any claims that Lubitz deliberately crashed the plane because of reason X or Y. It’s even more irresponsible to try and link the crash to Lubitz’s mental health. The fact is, we don’t know.
Depression does not make you want to kill people
I can’t believe I’m having to write this. “Why on Earth was he allowed to fly?”, Daily Mail? Because there’s no reason to suggest that people with depression – and again, we don’t know if Lubitz actually had depression at the time – are a risk for the wider population. More generally, it’s the other way around. A study in theLancet Psychiatry last year found that people with mental illness in the UK were more likely to be victims of murder than people in the general population.
Trying to claim a link between depression and the crash only promotes stigma
The media sometimes likes to pretend that it’s making positive steps towards combatting stigmas surrounding all sorts of mental health. It’s really easy to report on campaigns like Time to Change, or cover a story about a new surveyexplaining how stigmatising attitudes create real problems for people with mental illnesses. That’s not good enough. If we’re serious about improving public attitudes towards mental health, we need to be persistently mindful about how we present potentially stigmatising information in the news. When it comes to the Germanwings crash, we’ve failed miserably today.
The only thing that we can be certain of at the moment is that an awful tragedy has happened that will have affected thousands of people. But making rushed and baseless claims about why it might have happened doesn’t do anybody any favours. If anything, it runs the risk of making it less likely that people coping with depression will want to speak up about their illness. We can, and should, be doing better than this.
Useful resources
- If you would like to know more about depression, the Mental Health Foundation has a lot of information on the subject, along with useful statisticsabout a wide range of mental health issues.
- If you are currently dealing with depression, the charity MIND has a lot of resources and guides, as well as a list of useful contacts in case you would like to talk to anyone about it.
- For employers, MIND also offers training courses to help promote mental wellbeing in the workplace.
- If you would like to complain about any of the press coverage today, the Time to Change campaign has advice on how to go about this. They also have a media advisory service that can provide training seminars on mental health reporting.
- The Mental Elf is an excellent resource if you would like to know more about up-to-date, evidence-based mental health research.
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