Stigmatising mental illness

Submitted by AWL on 7 April, 2015 - 5:35 Author: Harry Davies

I’m trying to summon some grit in order to explain the Daily Mail to you. This is a difficult task because my recurrent thought — “intolerant small-minded newspaper publishes astonishingly offensive and insensitive intolerant small-minded commentary” — is a. not that original and b. news to none of you.

I’m writing in this case about the crash of Germanwings A320 and that newspaper’s reaction to the pilot’s mental health. The ideological position that any form of mental illness (and this is a pointlessly generalised term covering a spectrum of issues which affect pretty much the entire population) in some way determines one’s ability to hold a position of authority.

Recently I was privileged to watch a powerful speech by a delegate to the conference of teaching union NUT. Nial Pickering spoke about the stigma of depression. I have also talked to teacher comrades with mental health issues, caused or heightened by the pressures of workload and corporate style management. I know this happens across all industries and workplaces because I’ve worked across many sectors myself and I’ve suffered from a horribly debilitating level of depression. Everywhere I worked, I wasn’t alone.

So to look at the Mail screaming “Suicide pilot had long history of depression, why on earth was he allowed to fly” was not the most life-affirming of moments for me. I won’t sadden you with the detail of their argument, though it’s hard to imagine a more accusatory and ill-informed text, juxtaposed with images of grieving families. 

A horribly cynical and brutal message, pandering to mythic narratives of British Resolve and The Stiff Upper Lip emerge. A Daily Mail world is one where all pilots are Dan Dare and only foreigners and lefties are weak-minded enough to admit to depression. This is a world that excludes Turing or Behan or Plath or anyone who finds themselves experiencing those overwhelming feelings, no matter what form they take.

A world where we can make everything better by shouting angry rhetorical questions, whilst ignoring the bigger points.

Andreas Lubitz was unfit for duty and the reason that this wasn’t picked up on is because corporate airlines view mental health support as a ten minute HR questionnaire. Indeed several anonymous pilots confirmed this in a BBC story. The bigger story here is that profit trumps lives. A planeload of passengers and crew become the excuse to publish propaganda demonising and marginalising people like me and millions of others.

The same front page promised a “free bag of compost tomorrow”, which seemed superfluous as there was plenty of bullshit already.

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