The brutal story is now familiar to most - on March 24th, Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz flew a plane into a mountain, killing himself and 149 people onboard. This story is upsetting for a myriad of reasons, but one detail in particular has baffled me completely - the misnomer that depression somehow caused the crash. In the weeks since the fatal incident, the coverage of the Lubitz has been making an erroneous connection between depression, privacy and disclosure, and what has been argued the preventable death of the innocent people aboard the airliner.

Call me naive, but I assumed there was more of a general awareness about depression. The diagnosis is extremely common, affecting a whooping 4 percent of the world's population. The consequences of the disorder are severe, and adding to the complications of the illness are stigma, lack of access to mental health treatment, and general misunderstanding of depression (what it is, what it does to people’s lives, and how it can be treated).

In the aftermath of the Germanwings’ tragedy, much of the media discussion has focused on Lubitz’s mental health, including his history of depression and his suicidal tendencies. While the theory is a convenient explainer for those who know little about mental illness, it is not an accurate representation of depression - or an explainer for Lubitz’s decision to kill an airplane full of people. Depression does not create murderers, and disclosure of mental illness to Germanwings of his condition could not have prevented the autocity Lubitz committed.

A depressed person does not become a killer due to their illness. Suicide from depression is a singular act; an undertaking where the individual seeks death on themselves as a solution to intolerable pain. What Lubitz committed in the crashing of the Germanwings aircraft was homicide - it was not an act of depressive suicidality.

Depression is an illness that is simultaneously over and under diagnosed by mental health professionals. I know this first hand, having worked as a social worker in New York City. Over and over I saw the diagnoses of depression being doled out, often to individuals that were displaying symptoms of anger, guilt, or sadness based on situational circumstance. While these behavioral symptoms should be acknowledged and, if appropriate, treated,  I believe that they should not be lumped in with the diagnoses of depression. Depression has become a catch-all for physicians, with individuals being tagged with the disease when the symptoms don’t truly fit.

The over-diagnosis of depression creates a strange dynamic for the disease. Despite the increase in global recognition of the disorder, depression is still widely stigmatized, and the nebulous view on what precisely the disease is goes largely unknown by those who are not sufferers.  

Think about it: how many times do you hear weekly, "I am so depressed" from friends and co-workers? While I am not attempting to minimize the daily trauma of sadness, often what is understood as normal melancholy can be misconstrued for depression.

When I worked as a case-manager, I came to explain the disorder as either “capital-D” depression or “lower case-d” depression. While most of the global population experiences “lowercase d” depression throughout their lifetimes, “capital-D” (i.e.: clinical depression or major depressive disorder) is less common. Depression shatters lives and robs individuals of their cognitive functioning - and it is almost completely unmanageable without appropriate behavioral treatment. As a social worker with specialty in mood disorders, I always recommend a look-into Marsha Linehan’s Dialectical Behavior Therapy (a.k.a: DBT) or cognitive behavioral therapy for individuals experiencing depressive episodes.

Returning to Lubitz and the cause of the Germanwings crash, numerous medical professionals have stepped forward arguing that the tragedy should not be linked to depression. Dr. Anne Skomorowsky, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University, said she didn’t know what was behind Lubitz’s actions of acting blase prior to the collision, locking the pilot out of the cockpit, and deliberately crashing a plane full of people. “I don’t know what that is," Skomorowsky wrote in a Slate article, “but it’s not depression.”

While it is natural to seek answers to a tragedy, understanding the downed Germanwings plane should not seek explanation from depression. It is arguable that Lubitz suffered from some kind of mental illness, and perhaps even depression, but it is critical to recognize that the diagnosis does not lead to murder. Lubtitz’s treatment for depression in no way is suggestive of the massacre he committed. As the world heals from the calamity of so many lives lost, the consequences of using depression as a cause of the disaster does nothing to uncover the truth of the tragedy - it simply further stigmatizes the mentally ill.

With so many global atrocities happening weekly, if not daily, it is important that we, global citizens, work to create a world of increased understanding. Often in wake of horrible events, it is easy to go for the simple answers, but we must challenge ourselves to go beyond what is easy, and seek more nuanced answers to monstrosity.