Was it depression or antidepressants that caused Andreas Lubitz to crash the Germanwings plane?
Antidepressant medications were found in Lubitz’s apartment, although there is no evidence he was taking them. Rather than blaming the depression, some writers are wondering if we shouldn’t blame the anti-depressants.
On the website Mad In America, David Healy, MD, argues in a blog “Winging it: Antidepressants and Plane Crashes that antidepressants double the risk of suicide. “They do so by causing psychosis, or by producing an agitation laced with suicidal or homicidal thoughts, or by producing an almost lobotomized state in which people will do things they would ordinarily never do, or by increasing blood alcohol levels if the person has had a drink.”
Remember that medical science does not know how antidepressants work or even if they do actually change brain chemistry in helpful ways. We do know that serotonin levels are not linked to depression, yet this neurotransmitter is what selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonin-norepinepherine re-uptake inhibitors (SNRIs) are purported to alter.
What is most frightening to me about psychoactive drugs is this phrase from Healy’s post: “Once treated with a drug, a pilot is never the same again.” Many people do not realize that once most psychoactive drugs are ingested they permanently alter brain chemistry and functioning. Do we want pilots who are on or have been on these drugs? Or if they have been on the drugs, shouldn’t the FAA/NTSB be closely monitoring them?
Also on Mad In America, Julie Wood reports that at least 47 planes have crashed while the pilots were on antidepressants.
She provides extensive evidence of many other plane crashes that were or were likely to be suicides and shows a link between these crashes and psychoactive medication use.
Wood concludes:
- Suicides involving aircraft are almost certainly under-reported;
- The potential contribution of antidepressant medications to crashes is not being properly considered in crash investigations, and the FAA/NTSB are either unaware of, or are disregarding many side effects reflected in black box warnings;
- Among the relevant side-effects that the FAA seems not to take into account are suicidal ideation and violent thoughts.
- Commercial pilots are taking more antidepressant drugs, and lying about it more often, than the FAA acknowledges.
Big Pharma and physicians continue to pretend that psychoactive drugs are harmless “cures.”
Actually, they are far from harmless and they cure nothing.