|
 The anonymous survey of about 1,850 pilots from more than 50
countries found that 14 percent of pilots who had worked within the
past week had symptoms of depression. Four percent of pilots
reported having suicidal thoughts within the past two weeks.
The survey offers one of the first snapshots of mental health among
commercial pilots, who often don’t disclose this type of illness to
airline officials or aviation regulators because they fear negative
career repercussions, said senior study author Joseph Allen, a
public health researcher at Harvard University in Boston.
“It’s understandable that pilots are reluctant to fully disclose
mental health issues because of the potential that they will be
grounded or declared not fit for duty,” Allen told Reuters Health by
email.
With roughly 140,000 active pilots flying more than 3 billion people
worldwide each year, the survey results should put the airline
industry on notice that many pilots need better access to mental
health screening and treatment, Allen added.
The new findings come a year and a half after a Germanwings co-pilot
who suffered from depression deliberately crashed a plane into the
French Alps, killing 150 people.
Globally, roughly 350 million people suffer from depression.
Effective treatments exist, but many people don't get them - often
due to stigma.
To get a better picture of mental health among airline pilots,
researchers conducted an anonymous online survey between April and
December of 2015. Questions touched on a range of topics related to
work and health in addition to depression.
Most respondents came from the U.S., Canada and Australia.
Out of nearly 3,500 pilots who participated in the survey, 1,848
completed the questions about mental health. Within this group, 233
(12.6 percent) met the criteria for likely depression and 75 (4.1
percent) reported having suicidal thoughts within the previous two
weeks.
Among 1,430 participants who reported working as an airline pilot in
the previous seven days at the time of the survey, 193 (13.5
percent) met the criteria for depression.
A greater proportion of male pilots than female pilots reported that
“nearly every day” they had experiences of loss of interest, feeling
like a failure, trouble concentrating, and thinking they would be
"better off dead."
Women were more likely than men to have at least one day of poor
mental health during the previous month, and were more likely to
have been diagnosed with depression.
[to top of second column] |
The study also found that depression was more likely when pilots
took lots of sleep medication and when they experienced sexual or
verbal harassment.
Limitations of the study include the lack of medical records or
exams to assess mental health symptoms pilots reported in the
survey, the authors note.
"The study likely underestimates the amount of depression that
exists among pilots, however, it cannot address the severity of the
symptoms and the extent of individual impairment," Dr. Joseph
Baskin, a psychiatrist at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio who wasn't
involved in the study, said by email.
Pilots may not tell their own doctors about feeling depressed
because both having this diagnosis and taking antidepressants come
with stigma and a fear of being grounded, said Dr. Blake Lollis, an
aerospace medicine specialist at Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital in
Washington who wasn't involved in the study.
Still, this diagnosis isn't as career-ending as it used to be,
Lollis added by email. They may cleared to fly, for example, while
on anti-depressants, even if they would be grounded for severe
depression accompanied by any psychotic symptoms.
"It is clear that depression is undertreated among pilots," said Dr.
Alpo Vuorio, an aviation medicine researcher at the University of
Helsinki in Finland who wasn't involved in the study.
"I hope that current discussions after the Germanwings accident has
helped pilots to seek help more openly," Vuorio said by email.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2hGqjMV Environmental Health, online December
14, 2016.
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
