Coping With Elemental Responsibilities

"Documents with medical contents were confiscated that point toward an existing illness and corresponding treatment by doctors. The fact there are sick notes saying he [Andreas Lubitz, co-pilot of Germanwings' Flight 9525] was unable to work, among other things, that were found torn up, which were recent and even from the day of the crime, support the assumption based on the preliminary examination that the deceased hid his illness from his employer."
German prosecutors' office

"Clearly assessment of all pilots' physical and mental health is entirely appropriate -- but assumptions about risk shouldn't be made across the board for people with depression, or any other illness. There will be pilots with experience of depression who have flown safely for decades and assessments should be made on a case-by-case basis."
Rethink Mental Illness, Mind and Time to Change charity

A stele in memory of the victims of the Germanwings Airbus A320 crash is pictured in the small village of Le Vernet, French Alps, on March 27, 2015, near the site where a Airbus A320 crashed on March 24. (Jeff Pachoud/AFP/Getty Images)

There will always be those who point out they personally know people who suffer from various kinds of mental illnesses, sometimes gravely so, but who when following their medication protocol function extremely well. So that it is wrong to discriminate against those coping with a mental illness and precluding them from fully participation in employment opportunities that most appeal to them and for which they appear to have a natural affinity, and in whose performance they excel as well educated professionals.

There is more than an element of truth in those claims, but just as all human beings are uniquely themselves, circumstances impact on us all in different ways, and we respond in different ways to challenges set before us. A high degree of intelligence does not preclude transitory periods where the emotional wellsprings come undone as a result of the trajectory of a mental illness. Nor are there guarantees that even those who adjust well to their drug protocols will at one time or another decide they no longer need them, or temporarily set them aside.

People suffering from mental illness who aspire to have meaningful employment in a profession that appeals to them will, we are often reminded, not be entirely forthcoming about their health status to avoid being informed that certain professions are not deemed suitable for them to pursue given their health problems. One might imagine a responsible adult could instinctively and of their own volition recognize the potential danger to public safety that could arise should someone be entrusted with the safety of others when they may at times not be in full possession of a stable mind.

Andreas Lubitz, 28, came from a privileged background as a child of educated and well-off parents who indulged his passion for flight at a very young age. Enabling his enrolment in flying school in his early teens when he exhibited a proficiency and passion they must have hoped would stabilize his mental condition. But even they must have been aware deep in their subconscious that to encourage their son in commercial aviation might at some future date result in a potential risk to others.

Certainly signs popped up here and there that such risks existed. As when the young stewardess who also flew for the airline spoke of her boyfriend Andreas having stated to her on one occasion that he would one day do something to ensure that the world knew his name. And now the world does know his name. What precisely precipitated his single-minded decision to end his life in martyrdom to the devils that haunted him and sacrificing the lives of another 149 people will likely never be known.

There are hints; that if his mental disequilibrium that sent him repeatedly to hospital and for one prolonged period interrupted his pilot training, wouldn't suffice to sever his plans to pilot passenger jets as a living, news that his eyesight was deteriorating and would impede his aspirations -- along with his girlfriend deciding that his mental and physical conditions created a personality she felt she could not live with, breaking off their relationship -- might have developed his conviction that death by suicide was preferable to resigning himself to living a life that denied him his yearnings.

In the final analysis, despite protestations by Lufthansa that the young pilot kept his medical condition from them, due diligence on their part in ensuring that the lives of passengers whose safety was entrusted to them not be placed in danger was absent. And nor can the mental health specialists who treated this young man and who wrote scripts excusing him on a number of occasions from work, including the last flight he and 149 others were to take to their death, be entirely excused.

A French gendarmerie's helicopter lifts an investigator on March 26, 2015 near scattered debris on the crash site of the Germanwings Airbus A320 that crashed in the French Alps above the southeastern town of Seyne. (Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP/Getty Images)

Giving a man suffering from mental instability, who persisted in doing what he must have known might end up being dangerous for other people, and seemingly didn't much care a note explaining to his employers that he should be temporarily exempted from a work schedule and expecting him to deliver it, speaks of a professional disconnect. Even experts in treating mental illness balk at being spoken of as "discriminatory" against the mentally ill.

They can invoke the sacred patient-doctor confidentiality clause, but the simple fact remains; they are in possession of knowledge that leads to the realization that a patient is in a position to pose a very real threat to the existential well-being of a great many other people. In not relaying that information directly to the employer they in effect consign those people to the fate that awaits them when no one wants to take the ultimate responsibility that reason dictates.