Get Your Story Straight

So many of us hear only part of what's being said, leap to the worst possible conclusion, and have such a strong emotional reaction that we completely miss the rest of the details that would tell us the exact opposite of what we'd concluded.  Especially those of us with ADHD.

I was reminded of this when I attended the ADDA Conference, in Orlando, in 2014.

On the second morning of the conference, the lead TV news story was that a flight was diverted back to the Toronto airport and stormed by a SWAT team, after a passenger made terroristic threats. But the threats had turned out to be false.

My first thought was, “What @#$%*! IDIOT would do that, on a plane???”

My second thought was to go to the online version of the Toronto Star newspaper, to get the details that I knew were missing from the CBS News report.

It turns out that the passenger who’d made the threat was NOT “some @#$%*! idiot”. He was a young man with a long history of depression and other mental issues, which often caused him to lose his temper and make threats, especially when he felt he’d been wronged. 

He’d stopped taking his meds, and his parents had been trying desperately to get him into a mental health program, because they knew something terrible would happen to him if they didn’t. In the past 2 years, they’d contacted emergency services at least 30 times, but the answer was always the same.

Under Ontario, Canada law, anyone over 15 is responsible for their OWN medical treatment. Nobody can force them into treatment unless they commit some criminal act, or have a major crisis. So, the parents couldn’t get any help for their son.

He was 25.

And of Middle-Eastern descent, which, of course, made him appear to be even more of a threat. He and his girlfriend were en route to a romantic vacation together, and he’d found out that Duty Free cigarettes cost less on the plane than he’d paid for them at the airport.

This triggered his outburst, which diverted the flight, which was escorted back by U.S. military jets, then stormed on the tarmac by a SWAT team, who took him into custody, where his parents were FINALLY able to get him the psychiatric assessment and care that he needs.

In the days that followed that initial report, I didn’t see any follow-up stories on the TV news in Florida. Nothing to explain that it wasn’t a case of someone being stupid or drunk, but of a very ill person who couldn’t get the help he needed, despite his parents efforts, until something terrible happened.

So, most people will still believe that it was just a case of “some @#$%*! idiot” doing something stupid on a plane.