@Mal Campbell - something that crossed my mind while reading your last comment was that I've read that the wrong anti-depressants can make the condition worse. While I can't say that applied in this case, the standard of medical care in situations like these is something that probably isn't adequately monitored. I know that in some cases they do good work, but I'm afraid that in general I don't trust doctors, and even more so since my Dad's death.
Mal, I didn't not mean to upset you with my comment, and I would like to apologize for doing so. I do believe that drugs can be very helpful treatment when used properly, and did not mean to imply otherwise. I will be careful what I post henceforth, and am truly sorry that what I said upset you.
Yvonne, thank you. Your post didn't really upset me, it's just that there is so much misinformation out there about mental illness. As soon as I heard that the co-pilot may have been depressed, I knew that the media was going to blow it out of proportion and use this as a reason to legally discriminate against the "mentally ill". Sure enough, I've seen several articles already saying that we need to get rid of medical privacy, for the sake of safety. What scares me, is that people are willing to give up so much of their freedoms for the appearance of safety. If we pass a law that says that doctors have to inform employers about employee health, then people will stop going to the doctor and getting the help they need. As for mental evaluations, having been bipolar since my teens, I've been given psychological evaluations many times - and I can tell you, any semi-intelligent person who is willing to fib a little, can pass those tests easily. As you pointed out in your OP, many of the mentally ill persons who have committed crimes have been on SSRIs, but it wasn't the SSRIs that caused them to do these things. They were sick, so they started taking the meds, the meds didn't make them sick. The problem lies in the term "mentally ill". There are some truly insane, crazy people out there, like paranoid schizophrenics, who may pose a threat to society, but the vast majority of depressed people would never consider harming anyone else. Unfortunately, both are labelled "mentally ill". We've come a long way in accepting mental illness - but there's still so much people don't understand. And I think it scares them. This was a horrible tragedy, but it's an anomaly - very few mentally ill people harm others.
That is so right. I also hope that the evidence against the co-pilot does not make people think that anyone who contemplate suicide would want others to suffer as a consequence. This man had been looking online for suicide information and about cockpit door security. These are not the same thing. Suicide as a state of mind is quite different from deciding to commit mass murder. If he had just taken his own life that would have been tragic, but it looks as if he was determined to become notorious for being known as a mass killer. That is a completely different mindset and is not necessarily connected to mental illness.
The airline pilots are against taking the airplane's control away from them during a flight. The danger is that any software able to do that, could be hacked,and a plane could be downed by remote control, after taking control away from two perfectly able pilots.