Mental Health
There are an awful lot of armchair pilots chucking in theories and a fair amount of nonsense here.
So as a professional pilot, let me tell you my experience of a mental health issue.
I had been flying around 12 years and suffered reactionary depression from a serious life event. I sought help from my GP and was signed off work and prescribed anti-depressants and sleeping tablets. In accordance with the established regulations I reported the matter to my employer and the UK CAA and received a temporary unfit letter. It took time to recover and I used every tool available, counselling, medication and so on. I was off medication and about to return to work for what I hoped would be a managed return when I was disciplined by my airline for absence. I was given a final warning despite my, and Balpa's best efforts. I struggled with the concept of returning to work in what would be a difficult set of circumstances and eventually relapsed into depression again. I had hoped I would have been treated with respect and dignity, I was not.
I was never given a golden ticket into a shiny cockpit. I worked my way their, the old way, PPL, CPL, FI, FO and so on and became a captain at my company and happily flew for them for 9 years without any incident or problem, I can't even remember being off with a cold.
I did recover, regained my class 1 medical and hunted for work. It's been 2 years now. I have never flown anything since. I have drifted from job to job and dream of flying almost every day but now accept it is unlikely ever to happen again. I miss it dreadfully and wish almost every day I had not told anyone, but I did and now I'm paying for it big time.
The whole industry needs a serious shake up in terms of viewing of mental health. Performance management by sending pilots to simulators and bashing the hell out of someone who has suffered from depression is not the way forward. If airlines keep treating crew like something on the bottom of their shoe things will never improve.
None of this of course condones what has happened, if indeed the final investigation proves this to be the case and at no point did I ever fancy killing anyone, although my feeling towards the HR manager weren't very nice at the time.....
Anyway, just my experience, from a former ATPL holder.....