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Officials: Co-pilot in German plane crash was treated for suicidal tendencies Officials: Co-pilot in German plane crash was treated for suicidal tendencies
(about 9 hours later)
DÜSSELDORF, Germany — The co-pilot suspected of crashing a Germanwings jetliner had been treated years earlier for suicidal tendencies, German authorities said Monday, in a development that was sure to fuel an emerging debate about the limits of medical privacy. DÜSSELDORF, GERMANY — The co-pilot who crashed a Germanwings jetliner was treated years ago for suicidal tendencies, authorities said Monday. But although doctors who were worried about Andreas Lubitz’s mental health had recently told him to stay away from work, Germany’s strict medical privacy laws may have prevented them from circulating their concerns more widely.
Andreas Lubitz, 27, “had received psychotherapy for an extended period of time, during which suicidal tendencies had been noted,” Düsseldorf prosecutor Christoph Kumpa said Monday. But he said the treatment occurred “several years ago,” before Lubitz was issued a pilot’s license. More recent encounters with doctors showed no suicidal tendencies, nor have investigators found any evidence of advance planning or any clear motive, Kumpa said. The confidentiality restrictions are fueling an emerging debate about German laws that critics say emphasize personal privacy rather than the greater good. The details released Monday suggested that Lubitz had been treated for severe psychological issues for years before he steered Flight 9525 into a French Alpine mountainside, killing all 150 on board. But airline that employed him said it was kept in the dark.
The emerging revelations that Lubitz had faced psychological issues for years raised new questions about Germany’s expansive medical privacy laws, which constrain doctors’ abilities to speak out. Germany has a deep-seated devotion to privacy, in part a legacy of the Nazi and East German Communist years when fearsome authorities pried into all aspects of their citizens’ lives. Any reforms are sure to be slow and controversial. Yet amid revelations from investigators that Lubitz’s mental health issues were well documented but a secret between him and his doctors, some lawmakers here are pressing for changes.
Some German politicians have called to rethink the restrictions in the name of safety. Lubitz plunged Germanwings Flight 9525 into the French Alps on Tuesday, killing all 150 passengers and crew members aboard. “An expert committee should be established, in which ethics experts, doctors, maybe also legal practitioners, properly think through when is it actually in the common interest to violate medical confidentiality,” Thomas Jarzombek, a member of the German parliament’s traffic committee, told a German television station.
The new details released Monday suggested that investigators were increasingly focusing on psychological issues as a major component of Lubitz’s motivations. Since the initial course of psychotherapy, Lubitz had continued to see neurologists and psychiatrists “until recently,” the prosecutor said. Prosecutors said Monday that psychologists and neurologists had recently written notes excusing Lubitz from work. Investigators found one such doctor’s note, torn up, in one of Lubitz’s residences, suggesting he was working to hide his health issues from his bosses.
Those specialists found evidence of problems severe enough to justify excusing Lubitz from work, the prosecutor said, although he did not say what specific diagnosis had sparked the concerns. Lubitz, 27, “had received psycho­therapy for an extended period of time, during which suicidal tendencies had been noted,” Düsseldorf prosecutor Christoph Kumpa said Monday. The treatment occurred several years ago, before Lubitz was issued a pilot’s license, and there was no medical evidence of suicidal thoughts since then, Kumpa said, despite broader mental health issues.
The prosecutor also said investigators have found no evidence that Lubitz was suffering from any physical ailments. An official familiar with the investigation said separately that Lubitz had been consulting doctors for vision issues but that those problems may have been psychosomatic. Germany’s medical system generally relies on individuals to pass along information about their fitness for work to their employers. Only in the most extreme circumstances are doctors empowered to breach patient confidentiality, and they face steep legal repercussions if they are later deemed not to have met the bar. Violations of medical privacy can carry criminal sentences of up to five years in jail.
The German laws, critics contend, could have made it less likely that any doctor aware of Lubitz’s health problems would pass the information on.
A spokeswoman for the German Health Ministry, Doris Berve-Schucht, said Monday that “a breach of confidentiality can be justified and appropriate” if a doctor judges that a life-threatening crime is imminent.
In some cases — including ones involving highly contagious diseases and evidence of abuse of a minor — doctors are indeed compelled by law to inform authorities.
In most cases of patients who may pose a potential danger to themselves or others, legal and medical experts say doctors here have some legal flexibility to inform authorities. But doctors hold no legal obligation to do so.
Keeping silent about the information is unlikely to bring repercussions; divulging it based on weak or false assumptions could garner serious charges.
The German norms contrast with those in the United States, where states have “duty to warn” or “duty to protect” laws that expose doctors who stay silent to potentially large civil lawsuits, creating an incentive to act. Federal medical privacy law leaves it to doctors’ judgment whether to break confidentiality and warn authorities if patients are a danger to themselves or others.
Doctors’ groups in Germany contend that the Lubitz’s case is so unparalleled that moving to change medical privacy laws would amount to a national overreaction.
“Privacy between patient and doctor is a human right, and especially with our history in Germany, it is important we keep a firm line between privacy and government,” said Frank Ulrich Montgomery, president of the German Medical Association.
Some experts warned that the debate over mental illness following the Germanwings crash has the potential to cross a line by demonizing those who are grappling with psychological conditions.
“So what can anyone who is taking an antidepressant do? Only be basket weavers?” said Steven K. Hoge, chairman of the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Psychiatry and Law.
German detectives investigating the plane crash have discovered that neurologists and psychologists found evidence of problems severe enough to justify excusing Lubitz from work, prosecutors said Monday. They did not say what specific diagnosis sparked the concerns.
Investigators have not found any evidence of advance planning to crash a plane, said Kumpa, the prosecutor.
The revelations added to the portrait of Lubitz that has emerged in recent days: a man who had finally achieved his dreams of becoming an airline pilot but who was plagued by psychological conditions that may have driven him to fear losing his job.The revelations added to the portrait of Lubitz that has emerged in recent days: a man who had finally achieved his dreams of becoming an airline pilot but who was plagued by psychological conditions that may have driven him to fear losing his job.
Doctors had written official notes excusing him from work — including one on the day of the crash — but Lubitz had torn up at least one of them and had not passed them along to Germanwings. Kumpa said Monday that investigators have found no evidence that Lubitz was suffering from any physical ailments. An official familiar with the investigation said separately that Lubitz had been consulting doctors for vision issues but that those problems may have been psychosomatic.
In Germany, such medical notes serve as a legal basis for excusing worker absences, but they are commonly issued for illnesses as insignificant as the flu and almost as commonly disregarded. The official familiar with the investigation a day earlier said that police had discovered papers with words and phrases in Lubitz’s handwriting suggesting deep stress about the future and about his vision, for which he had apparently been seeking treatment. The vision issues, layered on top of the preexisting psychological problems, apparently made Lubitz fear losing his job, officials said.
Germany’s medical system generally relies on individuals to pass along information about their illnesses to their employers. Only in the most extreme of circumstances are doctors empowered to breach patient confidentiality, and they face steep legal repercussions if they are later deemed not to have met the bar. Düsseldorf police said Monday that they had deployed about 200 officers to an “Alps Special Commission” to investigate the crash, with 50 of them investigating exclusively the criminal aspects of the case.
Germany’s Lufthansa airlines, the parent company of Germanwings, has said that it never received any information about Lubitz’s mental state, and Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said the company believed their pilot was “100 percent fit to fly.”
[How Germanwings Flight 9525 fell to Earth]
German and French investigators continued to sift Monday through the evidence they had seized from Lubitz’s two residences, including an iPhone, iPad and a computer. But Kumpa said there was no obvious reason in the “immediate personal or family environment that would give solid evidence of a possible motive.”
An official familiar with the investigation said Sunday that police had discovered papers with words and phrases in Lubitz’s handwriting suggesting deep stress about the future and about the vision problems, for which he had apparently been seeking treatment. The vision issues, layered on top of the preexisting psychological problems, appeared to make him fear losing his job, officials said.
Düsseldorf police said Monday that they had tasked about 200 officers to an “Alps Special Commission” to investigate the crash, of which 50 were investigating exclusively the criminal aspects of the case. Two French police officers have embedded with the German detectives in Düsseldorf, the Düsseldorf police agency said in a statement.
German law-enforcement officers had fanned out across western Germany to take DNA samples to help identify victims, a process that could take weeks.
On Sunday, Germany’s Bild newspaper disclosed new details about the “black box” recordings of the Airbus A320, which was en route from Barcelona to Düsseldorf.
[A look inside an Airbus A320]
Early on, the flight’s captain is heard apologizing to passengers for a delayed takeoff. About 20 minutes later, the pilot is heard talking to Lubitz and mentioning that he did not make it to the bathroom in Barcelona before the flight. Lubitz — who, investigators say, initiated the fatal descent after the pilot left the cockpit — is heard saying that he is willing to take over at any time.
At one point, according to Bild, the pilot asks Lubitz to plan for the flight’s landing in Düsseldorf. Lubitz is heard responding oddly, using conditional phrasing about the landing, such as “hopefully” and “we’ll see.”
The pilot is heard exiting the cockpit and later attempts to get back in but is locked out. As the pilot grows more desperate to reenter the cockpit, a loud bang is heard; he appears to be trying to break down the door. He is heard shouting, “For God’s sake, open the door.”
Although French prosecutors have said that passengers’ screams were heard shortly before the crash, the Bild report suggests that the pilot’s frantic attempts to get back into the cockpit caused audible panic several minutes before the crash.
[Lubitz’s path from a young aspiring aviator to co-pilot]
Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said Sunday that DNA traces of 78 victims had been found at the mountainside crash site, where investigators have been struggling with the logistics of the forbidding landscape. He said a road would be constructed by Monday that would ease the transport of debris for further examination. Investigators have not found key parts of the flight data recorder that would help them determine technical information about the plane’s final descent.
Family members of the victims, meanwhile, were processing the loss of their loved ones. Very few have spoken publicly, but Philip Bramley, a British man whose son, Paul Bramley, was among the dead, read a statement to TV cameras Saturday calling the co-pilot’s motive for crashing the plane “not relevant.”
“What happened on the morning of 24 March was the act of a person who at the very least was ill,” he said. “If there was a motive or reason, we don’t want to hear it. It’s not relevant. What is relevant is this should never happen again. My son and everyone on that plane should not be forgotten ever.”
One factor that remains a question mark in the case is how or whether Lubitz’s relationship with his girlfriend played a role in his state of mind at the time of the crash. The two had appeared to be living together at Lubitz’s apartment in Düsseldorf.
The woman, whom the German news outlet Der Spiegel described as a math teacher, has been interviewed by authorities.
Faiola reported from Montabaur, Germany. Stephanie Kirchner in Montabaur contributed to this report.
Read more:Read more:
How a pilot can be locked out of the cockpitHow a pilot can be locked out of the cockpit
Flight 9525’s final moments, minute by minuteFlight 9525’s final moments, minute by minute
Faiola reported from Berlin. Stephanie Kirchner in Berlin contributed to this report.