Germanwings A320 crashed in France :(
Discussion
-Pete- said:
Simple question: Do you want people who are stressed, or doubt their competency, to go to their doctor? Or not?
Another simple question would be, do you want those people who have been diagnosed unfit to do their job, but choose not to take time off, to turn up and take off in control of your next holiday flight? No punishment or negative consequences for the further career, just some time off to sort out the head or what condition it may be, by a doctors order, if the person lacks awareness of the condition he/she is in.
Finlandia said:
No punishment or negative consequences for the further career, just some time off to sort out the head or what condition it may be, by a doctors order, if the person lacks awareness of the condition he/she is in.
If the person concerned lacks the awareness to know that there is something wrong, then who else is going to know? Are you suggesting psych testing for every pilot before every flight?RobinOakapple said:
If the person concerned lacks the awareness to know that there is something wrong, then who else is going to know? Are you suggesting psych testing for every pilot before every flight?
I think they may well know something is wrong, but not know exactly what it is. An eye condition for example will probably be an obvious one, you dont need to know exactly what's causing it, but when s
t's gone blurry, it's time to seek help, maybe have a test, possibly come out with glasses, or get some laser surgery. For some it's Pirate Patch time. In mental health conditions, because you cant see it like a broken leg, it's harder to diagnose and harder to fix. That doesnt mean we should throw people away as rubbish, it means that they should still be able to get the help and support they need to be able to do their job effectively, both morally and in law, there's an obligation to do that. For some they might not be able to do it anymore, and they need re-assigning to another job more suited to them. Both morally and in law, there's an obligation to do that too.
Some professions, law for example, stress sicknotes see you managed out of the business, so people seem to have an awful lot of bad backs. They know that they need the help, but cant tell their employer exactly what help they're being given out of fear. It's a personal opinion that a lot of the attitudes towards problems come from an old boy mentality that really should have fizzled out the same time as typing pools. It's not relevant in todays society, but it's still here.
I think that the focus towards 'shouldnt be flying if mental' is a tricky one because of the stigmas associated with a mental health condition, the lack of understanding what the condition is, the lack of compassion towards others that exacerbates the problem, and the support structure in place not being as best set up as it could be. Somewhere in the middle of all that is an airline trying to do the right thing for it's workers, and 150 people with families who got caught up in something that was hard to predict.
RobinOakapple said:
Finlandia said:
No punishment or negative consequences for the further career, just some time off to sort out the head or what condition it may be, by a doctors order, if the person lacks awareness of the condition he/she is in.
If the person concerned lacks the awareness to know that there is something wrong, then who else is going to know? Are you suggesting psych testing for every pilot before every flight?Finlandia said:
RobinOakapple said:
Finlandia said:
No punishment or negative consequences for the further career, just some time off to sort out the head or what condition it may be, by a doctors order, if the person lacks awareness of the condition he/she is in.
If the person concerned lacks the awareness to know that there is something wrong, then who else is going to know? Are you suggesting psych testing for every pilot before every flight?andy-xr said:
It's a personal opinion that a lot of the attitudes towards problems come from an old boy mentality that really should have fizzled out the same time as typing pools. It's not relevant in todays society, but it's still here.
That's probably part of it, but there's a lot more going on there, in both patient attitudes and the attitudes of third parties.Chief amongst that, there's a sizable chunk of society that will think someone less of a man, whatever that means, if they admit to mental health issues and/or go and see someone about it, and this applies to the patient themselves. It's probably a large part of why male suicide rates are about 3.5x that of women.
Again if you look at it rationally, that should have gone out with the dinosaurs, but it just hasn't. You and I probably have some element of that attitude ourselves, if just in our conditioned lizard brains rather than when we actually check our thinking for a moment.
The bit about this episode that I'm struggling with most is that it doesn't seem to be a trivial process to wind up being treated for depression or MH. I know that to get a treatment like CBT, you have to be quite proactive about it, and it's much easier to be avoidant and sit there on your own stewing in it. Therefore it kind of seems to me like this process was so close to working, so close to getting the guy the right help and removing him from dangerous situations, but just missed it. Inevitably this happens, it's not an exact science, but to me it makes it all the more tragic.
RobinOakapple said:
Finlandia said:
RobinOakapple said:
Finlandia said:
No punishment or negative consequences for the further career, just some time off to sort out the head or what condition it may be, by a doctors order, if the person lacks awareness of the condition he/she is in.
If the person concerned lacks the awareness to know that there is something wrong, then who else is going to know? Are you suggesting psych testing for every pilot before every flight?Finlandia said:
Because in many, if not most cases the ones close to a person on the verge of a mental breakdown can spot the changes in personality and behaviour. I also said that it doesn't have to be a mental illness, it can be any other condition that makes the person unfit to fly.
I'm not making myself clear. Forget it.Finlandia said:
Because in many, if not most cases the ones close to a person on the verge of a mental breakdown can spot the changes in personality and behaviour.
I think this misunderstands suicide, to be honest, and inadvertently says, "well shouldn't you have noticed?" to anyone who's been bereaved in such a way.I would suggest that in the majority of cases, there is no good outward indication, especially not of the severity or significance. I don't know this for certain, maybe you can find some statistics.
People are good at hiding things, and in many situations - like being stressed at work from doing very long hours, thus spending little time at home - there are inherently poor opportunities for those around them to have discussions about it, or to be able to take a step back and say, 'no, this is different now'. It's a little bit easier to retrospectively look at the signs after the fact, but even then not necessarily.
trashbat said:
Finlandia said:
Because in many, if not most cases the ones close to a person on the verge of a mental breakdown can spot the changes in personality and behaviour.
I think this misunderstands suicide, to be honest, and inadvertently says, "well shouldn't you have noticed?" to anyone who's been bereaved in such a way.I would suggest that in the majority of cases, there is no good outward indication, especially not of the severity or significance. I don't know this for certain, maybe you can find some statistics.
People are good at hiding things, and in many situations - like being stressed at work from doing very long hours, thus spending little time at home - there are inherently poor opportunities for those around them to have discussions about it, or to be able to take a step back and say, 'no, this is different now'. It's a little bit easier to retrospectively look at the signs after the fact, but even then not necessarily.
In this case, at least what news in Sweden are stating, AL was clearly troubled, he could talk normally one second and shout the next his mistress tells, he also locked himself in the bathroom for ages and wouldn't respond to anything, he had plenty of medication for mental illness at home but when asked about it he wouldn't say anything except that he is seeing a psychiatrist, he had reoccurring nightmares of crashing, he was stressed and depressed due to an eye condition that would have stopped his career in the very near future.
He was bullied at work, he had started his career as a steward, and was called Tomato Andi from the first day on flight deck. In Germany cabin crew are called tomatoes.
Warning signs are there, just someone needs to do something about them, and the one most likely to know how bad it was can't say a thing due to patient confidentiality.
BlackVanDyke said:
It sounds like Lubitz would have taken that crash axe to the pilot if he hadn't 'complied' and gone to the loo when pushed. I hope this doesn't morph into people blaming the captain for going.
No blame can be attached to the captain for leaving the flight-deck IMO. Playing devil's advocate for a moment though, my BIL did point out to me that is the captain's role to ensure the correct operation of the flight systems but also of his crew. He said he would feel a bit uneasy if his FO responded to a landing briefing in such a way - boring and monotonous as it may get, he said pilots don't deviate from standard procedural discussion and response exactly because it gets picked up by the CVR and you would be questioned on it post-flight i.e. if you f
k about in the cockpit you get severely bked for it.He conceded though that it wouldn't be enough to make the captain think anything was particularly untoward, especially on the scale it ended.
I think part of this guy's problem is that he was probably desperate to be a pilot from a young age and convinced himself that unless he did so he'd be a nobody with a st/unfulfilled/not worth living life. He busted his gut to get there (it's not easy to get to where he did), made huge sacrifices, and had to defeat a tonne of adversity to make it. Then, he finally makes it, but finds that life and relationships are still st, work is pretty st and far from the hoped for solution to all his dreams, and he's still the unhappy guy he always was. To top that, he is probably going to have a curtailed career with his various medical issues and that he'll end up as that nobody that he desperatedly didn't want to be in the first place. To him, no career is no life. So, he see's no way out of the inevitable spiral he finds himself in. The moment he locked the captain out of the cockpit his career is inevitably finished. His decsion is made and his fate is sealed one way or another.
t/unfulfilled/not worth living life. He busted his gut to get there (it's not easy to get to where he did), made huge sacrifices, and had to defeat a tonne of adversity to make it. Then, he finally makes it, but finds that life and relationships are still st, work is pretty st and far from the hoped for solution to all his dreams, and he's still the unhappy guy he always was. To top that, he is probably going to have a curtailed career with his various medical issues and that he'll end up as that nobody that he desperatedly didn't want to be in the first place. To him, no career is no life. So, he see's no way out of the inevitable spiral he finds himself in. The moment he locked the captain out of the cockpit his career is inevitably finished. His decsion is made and his fate is sealed one way or another. JuniorD said:
I think part of this guy's problem is that he was probably desperate to be a pilot from a young age and convinced himself that unless he did so he'd be a nobody with a st/unfulfilled/not worth living life. He busted his gut to get there (it's not easy to get to where he did), made huge sacrifices, and had to defeat a tonne of adversity to make it. Then, he finally makes it, but finds that life and relationships are still st, work is pretty st and far from the hoped for solution to all his dreams, and he's still the unhappy guy he always was. To top that, he is probably going to have a curtailed career with his various medical issues and that he'll end up as that nobody that he desperatedly didn't want to be in the first place. To him, no career is no life. So, he see's no way out of the inevitable spiral he finds himself in. The moment he locked the captain out of the cockpit his career is inevitably finished. His decsion is made and his fate is sealed one way or another.
That makes the suicide relatively explicable, but it's the taking of all the passengers with him that is bizarre.t/unfulfilled/not worth living life. He busted his gut to get there (it's not easy to get to where he did), made huge sacrifices, and had to defeat a tonne of adversity to make it. Then, he finally makes it, but finds that life and relationships are still st, work is pretty st and far from the hoped for solution to all his dreams, and he's still the unhappy guy he always was. To top that, he is probably going to have a curtailed career with his various medical issues and that he'll end up as that nobody that he desperatedly didn't want to be in the first place. To him, no career is no life. So, he see's no way out of the inevitable spiral he finds himself in. The moment he locked the captain out of the cockpit his career is inevitably finished. His decsion is made and his fate is sealed one way or another. Gassing Station | News, Politics & Economics | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff