Germanwings flight 4U9525 disaster.

Shocking and senseless! A few general facts are necessary, however, to stop the various notions about why the unfortunate, and relatively inexperienced pilot, Andreas Lubitz committed  such a horrendous and apparently entirely selfish, mass murder/suicide – as is so far alleged to be the theory - before the actual facts (and suppostions) are presented in a sober and reasoned manner.

First up, no test (or tests) is (are) available which will confirm any “mental illness” (Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases excepted). Mental issues are not (repeat not) similar to any physical illness such as the much quoted phrase “diabetes or heart disease”. Any person presenting with a mental issue is “diagnosed” by observed behaviour and by the presenting person’s self-reported mental state – and then subjectively judged, by a Mental Health professional, using an “approved” check list of “depression indicators”.

The operative word is “presenting”. Anyone with any intelligence and who has been psychologically tested many times before will “know the ropes” and be able to circumvent questions which may be “compromising” or which may impact unfavourably on that person’s future.

It was therefore not possible for any mental health professional to have determined, with any degree of absolute certainty, that Lubitz was “mentally ill”- whether he was depressed or a closet sociopath or had psychopathic tendencies. Possibly he was just someone who was trying to fulfil a dream and was found wanting – something he may have had difficulty in accepting.

We will never know.

My second point is that, as I understand it, anyone working for an airline must attend that particular airline’s approved doctor or doctors. It is that doctor who has the responsibility to inform the airline of any misgivings he (or she) may have about a particular employee’s health – mental or physical. I am sure that an airline with Lufthansa’s standing would have had such a medical regime in place.

It would appear, therefore, that either the doctor involved did not pass on the medical details (regarding prescriptions or any other concerns) to Lufthansa. Or, and I would find this very difficult to comprehend or believe, Lufthansa ignored the doctor’s concerns and/or advice regarding Lubitz.

Either way – if there is blame to be apportioned (and believe me there will be) it should lie somewhere in the orbit of the medical doctor and/or the pilot administration of Lufthansa.

Lubitz’s life, family, friends and career will be eviscerated by the investigators and the media trying to find any possible reason or reasons for such a horrendous and callous act. This is to be expected because the airline industry survives on trust and its fiercely protected safety record. Anything which impacts on this will be examined as never before.

And so it should be.

However research into suicide is notoriously difficult. It is always referring to an historic act – something that has already happened. Police, coronial, autopsy, psychiatric and psychological and counselling reports are analysed and carefully combed to try and establish some reason or motive for the suicide. This is fraught as it is impossible to know what was actually going through the person’s mind at the precise moment in time when they took their own life and (particularly, as in this case) when this includes the lives of so many other innocent people. At some moment – sometime earlier that fateful day - Lubitz made a choice.

Why? We will never know.

Pharma-psychology – is it faith based medicine?

I know this is an inflammatory question – but it still needs an answer, is pharma-psychology, the treatment of mental problems by drugs alone - based on faith – pharmaceutical faith? The medicines, the pharmaceutical drugs that have been developed for use in situations when a person’s mind is deemed to be unhinged or they are behaving in a manner considered to be “abnormal”, work up to a point. But no one (psychiatrists, psychologists, neuro-scientists, pharmacologists et al) knows WHY or HOW they work or what the long-term effects of continuous use are. They are adopting a “suck it and see” approach with people’s brains (and minds) – they are in effect using the affected people as guinea-pigs - which I think is both appalling and unethical.

While I have no faith (that word again) in statistics they are useful up to a point, in generalisations. So, generally, if one considers the commonly used Prozac - the results, compared to a placebo (a “sugar pill”), show that only about 50% of people who take the drug appear to benefit. Up to 33% suffer side effects – ranging from insomnia to reduced libido – that is 33 people out of every 100 who take Prozac. This is an astonishing result – so why use them?

In spite of what the pharmaceutical companies would like us to believe, while antidepressants such as Prozac do increase serotonin levels in the brain, this doesn’t mean that depression is caused by a shortage of serotonin. After all, paracetamol may reduce the unpleasant effects of a headache, but this doesn’t mean that a headache is caused by a deficiency of paracetamol!

The truth is that researchers know very little about how antidepressants work. A test that can measure the amount of serotonin in the living brain has yet to be developed. There is no way to even know what a “normal” level of serotonin is, let alone a low level, and it has yet to be shown if or how medication corrects these levels.

Many studies contradict the chemical imbalance theory of depression. Experiments have shown that lowering people’s serotonin levels doesn’t always lower mood, or worsen symptoms for those already depressed. And, furthermore, while some types of antidepressants may raise serotonin levels within hours, it takes weeks before the medication is able to (apparently) relieve depression. If a deficiency in serotonin actually causes depression, this time lag would not exist.

Also it is essential to be aware that the side effects of these drugs, without exception, are unpleasant – in fact some drugs (i.e. lithium) are positively lethal. It is very important to first read the warnings printed on the document inside every box of any medication.

It may be hard to believe but with some people there is the danger that a total reliance on antidepressant medication may cause an increase, rather than a decrease, in depression and with it, an increased risk of suicide. While this is particularly true of children and young adults on antidepressant medication, anyone taking antidepressants should be closely watched for suicidal thoughts and associated behaviour. The suicide risk is particularly great during the first few months of antidepressant treatment.

So, again, why use the stuff in the first place? It is important to recall the fact that no behaviour or misbehaviour (however aberrant - Alzheimer’s and Huntingdon’s accepted) can be categorised as a disease – in spite of the fact that many people now use the term “mental illness”. If you’re suffering from depression, antidepressant medication, used under the guidance of a mental health professional, may relieve, temporarily, some of your symptoms. But antidepressants aren’t a silver bullet for depression. Medication doesn’t cure the underlying problem and is rarely a long-term solution. As mentioned above there are real questions about their effectiveness and the many profound and disturbing side effects.

So to get back to my original question – is the exclusive use of medication to treat mental disturbances based on a faith in pharma-psychology? I believe it is. I also believe this faith is based on a flawed interpretation of the causes and the many issues associated with mental health. It is a false faith and is doing incalculable long term harm to many people.

Why is suicide considered a bad thing?

Amended September 11, 2018:

I know this is quite an old post but I strongly believe it is as relevant as ever. Some people do commit suicide and this has surely happened since humans first walked the earth.

This is not a treatise on the causes or possible reasons for suicide but the complexities behind the act have puzzled me for many years. In particularly our seeming abhorrence and our obvious dismay, regret and great sadness that anyone should even contemplate the need to end their life, by whatever means has taxed my understanding and the meaning of my life.

What follows below is my considered opinion:-

I ask the question – why is suicide considered such a bad thing? Now I am not advocating that anyone should commit suicide. I am just trying to pick apart the emotional clutter that accompanies this very personal and private act. The only answers I get are that it is a waste of a (usually) young person’s life; that they were loved; that they had unlimited potential, now never to be realised; that they had a future to live for – etc., etc.

This is partially correct but is not a real answer. The person concerned – the person now deceased – obviously had a different view of life. Their view, which I am not discussing (I have no idea what that was); I am discussing our view; that of the outsider; the ones left behind.

Why do we “outsiders” (I deliberately use this word because we are “outside’ that person’s inner world) consider suicide to be such a bad thing? Are we affronted because someone considers living – in their current situation – to be so bad, so threatening, so limiting as to be not worthwhile continuing? Are we discomforted because this rejection, this dismissal of all we has striven for (in “our” world), may reflect poorly on us, those left behind, regarding the way we have organised the world? Are we disturbed by the confronting prospect of having to admit that we make mistakes and that the way in which the economy, our legal, welfare and education systems are set up may actually cause distress, that we are not always fair or just in our dealings? Do we feel guilty that we have developed a financial system that promotes the massive imbalance between the very wealthy and the very poor and the disadvantaged?

We have to recognise that we are all, all, party to the ills of the world. We created them. If we look with even a modicum of insight we should see in ourselves the cause of these short comings and see ourselves reflected in the eyes of the distressed. And we should be dismayed.

Is this why we consider suicide a “bad thing” and are so shocked when it occurs?

It is needful to remember that we, each one of us, have our own experiences of life. These are our own. No one can see the world through our eyes with the same imagery and emotional response. No one can see the world through our eyes with our life experiences and our interpretations of those experiences – these are our own.

So I ask the question again – why is suicide considered such a bad thing? Obviously for the person concerned the prospect of death is more alluring than continuing living as currently experienced. What is “wrong” with that? It is their choice.

Then for some to say that only God can decide when or where a person dies is surely a gross over assumption - how do they know? What special insight do they possess? Is it not possible, because (I assume) God gave us free will that God may have already decided to allow a person who wants to die, to die?

Furthermore to declare (as some authority figures do) that most people who commit suicide suffer from a mental "illness" or disorder is surely wrong. It is also highly presumptuous on the part of the person making such a declaration – how do they ACTUALLY know! This is categorising a person, who now has no recourse or ability to refute the presumption. This is putting a label on someone. And then what about those “outsiders” left behind to live with the event – the family and friends? Are they to be made to suffer further pain with the stigma provided by so called experts who provide the “knowledge” that their son, daughter, friend, brother, sister “must have been mentally deranged” to have committed such an act. This implies that no “normal” person would ever do such a thing! What about self-sacrifice when there is loss of life? Isn’t this an act of suicide? But if it saves the life of others it is considered “noble”!! ("There is no greater love than this, that a man should lay down his life for his friends" - English King James Bible: John 15:13).

Research on completed suicides is notoriously difficult. It is always referring to an historic act – something that has already happened. Police, coronial, autopsy, psychiatric and psychological and counselling reports are analysed and carefully combed to try and establish some reason or motive for the suicide. This is fraught as it is impossible to know what was actually going through the person’s mind at the precise moment in time when they took their own life. At that moment they made a choice. Why? We can never know.

Shall we now look at what suicide actually is? Someone taking their own life – right? It seems that the “act” is only considered suicide if it results in the quick death of the person concerned. But what about those who commit suicide in the “long term”? Those who drink or drug themselves to death over a number of years, what about them? They may suffer from abuse, or from unbearable pressures associated with their domestic arrangements or at work. They may determine that the easiest and most “socially acceptable” way of easing this pressure or pain, is to get drunk or to get “stoned” on a regular basis. It may take some time but in possibly five or ten years they will be dead.   The emotional (and economic) “cost” of this (“long term suicide”) far exceeds that of any number of “quick” suicides.

To get back to the “mental illness or disorder” accusation. Disordered from what? What are these people supposed to be disordered from? From “normal”? As far as I can discover there is no accepted definition of “normal”. Possibly those considered “disordered” react to life’s trials and tribulations differently from those around them. Are they wrong? Or are we “outsiders” just being intolerant and lacking in understanding or compassion? Maybe these people are just eccentric – God knows there are enough odd ball people in the community!! Some behaviour may be considered mal-adaptive or possibly anti-social by “outsiders” but not by the people concerned – otherwise they wouldn’t act the way they do!

Similarly, why should anyone "live" according to another's expectations?  

There is an essay, “Suicide”, by the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711 – 1776) wherein he wrote, “I believe that no man ever threw away Life while it was worth keeping.”

What follows below is a warning relating to anti-depressant drugs:-

USA Federal Drug Administration Product Information Warning

Patients with major depressive disorder, both adult and pediatric, may experience worsening of their

depression and/or the emergence of suicidal ideation and behavior (suicidality), whether or not they are taking antidepressant medications, and this risk may persist until significant remission occurs. Although there has been a long-standing concern that antidepressants may have a role in inducing worsening of depression and the emergence of suicidality in certain patients, a causal role for antidepressants in inducing such behaviors has not been established. Nevertheless, patients being treated with antidepressants should be observed closely for clinical worsening and suicidality, especially at the beginning of a course of drug therapy, or at the time of dose changes, either increases or decreases.

Consideration should be given to changing the therapeutic regimen, including possibly discontinuing the medication, in patients whose depression is persistently worse or whose emergent suicidality is severe, abrupt in onset, or was not part of the patient’s presenting symptoms.

From the above it is apparent that psycho-pharmceutical medications are not always the answer!

Finally I will repeat a quote, from the Indian sage Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986), who said, "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society"

There we have it - in a nutshell!

The problem in Gaza is the Israelis

Tell me please, someone, why is Israel so special – more so than any other piece of God’s earth? The land was there before the Jews were thought of and will still be there long after the last Jew and the last Palestinian has perished. I am fully aware of recent Jewish history and the Holocaust and the Death Camps of horrific memory and why the State of Israel was ‘given’ to the Jews (and ‘taken’ from the Palestinians). That is now past and hopefully the world has learned something from those events. But I wonder if the Israelis have moved one iota from the Old Testament dictum of, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”. This does not work – never has, never will. All it does is to build resentment and continue a cycle of injustice, the seeking of revenge and feuding, which helps no one and harms many without solving the original problem. The Israelis should know this. They have been victims of the self same tactics!!

The Israelis know all this very well. Their history is replete with Jewish persecution and they quite rightly complain, loudly, to the world about anti-Zionism. If they persecute others, it is presumably pro-Zionist and therefore ok? So why should they use the same failed tactics, failed against them that is, against others and expect the tactics to work against ‘other’ ie Palestinians, this time around? Attacking Hamas, while at the same time killing innocent Palestinians in the hope that the surviving innocent Palestinians will blame Hamas (their elected Gaza government) for the slaughter and not Israel (whom they consider the occupying forces and also the oppressors) is a very unlikely scenario indeed.
I have said it before and I will say it again, and again – remove the causes and the reason for the formation and popularity of Hamas, Fatah and other hard line Arab organisations no longer exists. Think about the following:-

• The illegal and unjust occupation of Palestinian lands by the Israelis. Against the specific ruling of the United Nations the Israelis have continued with their construction of illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian lands. No compensation is offered to those Palestinians denied access – for 60 years – to what is rightfully their land.
• The Israelis complete clamp on all movement by Palestinians to prevent suicide bombs (so they say and yet the Israelis themselves developed terrorist tactics and used them against the British – see the destruction of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22nd July 1946 when a bomb placed in the basement by Israelis demolished part of the Hotel, killing 91 people -mainly British and injuring a further 46 people. Israelis celebrated the 60th anniversary of this event!)
• The blockade of Gaza. This prevents all shipment of food, water, medical supplies and any form of aid and causes untold misery in Gaza.
• The Israeli practice of using ‘collective’ punishment against ALL those in Gaza for the activities of those few who feel motivated enough to take some action. This is both unfair and unjust - and the Israelis know it!!

My sympathy for the Jewish people and my support for their ‘right’ to live in their Promised Land is rapidly diminishing. Because of their intransigence and obsession with the belief in their ‘rights’ to the land of Israel and as a ‘special’ people the Israelis are building up such a massive problem that we, in the West, will have to bail them out and clean up the mess they will be leaving. All for what? Pray tell me.