The kamikaze co-pilot who crashed a Germanwings airplane in the French Alps was on a mass murder mission much the same as the gunmen who carried out massacres in Aurora, Colo., and Sandy Hook, Conn., says Dr. Jeffrey Gardere.
"It's about rage and anger," the psychologist told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV on Friday, noting that "mental health issues played a big part" in 27-year-old Andreas Lubitz's horrific decision to crash the Lufthansa budget airliner.
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"It is something that's very akin to what happened in Aurora, Colorado, that happened in Connecticut, where we saw that youngsters wanted to commit suicide – but they wanted to kill as many people as possible at the same time," he said.
Gardere said the enormity of Lubitz's behavior indicated he "had more than a depression."
"Depressed people don't kill other people, depressed people end up hurting themselves many times," he said. "So, this was a situation of someone who had some sort of a severe personality disorder and maybe even some psychosis going on."
He added that Lubitz apparently "was not only fooling the world but fooling himself" by apparently denying "how serious his issues were."
There are concrete steps airlines can take to mitigate the chance of a similar tragedy in the future, Gardere said.
"Instead of just giving a psychological [test] at the beginning of the career to make sure they can be pilots," Gardere said, airline companies should administer such exams yearly "because they're under a tremendous amount of stress in this very high-skilled career that they're in."
Also, he said, airlines must be sure "to not stigmatize individuals who may be having some mental health issues."
"They're afraid of reporting their mental illness because they're afraid that they may lose their job," he said.
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