Mental Health, General Health & Aviation

[Sam I am]

99 AW's,

I was going to post this in the Commercial Aviation forum but thought it might gain more traction in the general forum as I have seen Mental Health and the FAA mentioned in several other threads. Looks like this issue is front and center in a recent pilot suicide up at UND. If there are friends of this young man on the forum, this isn't being posted out disrespect. Quite the opposite. The article mentions that in his last note he wrote to try and change the rules regarding mental health.

Can anyone offer more detail on the crux of the issue? I'm guessing that it revolves around loss of flight status for use certain meds (antidepressants come to mind) to correct very treatable health concerns. How big of a problem is this?

Here's the article:

'He felt trapped': Parents of UND student killed in plane crash push for more mental health help for pilots

In a letter left for his parents after his suicide, John Hauser wrote that life is not worth living if he could not fly.

www.inforum.com

Not sure if there's going to be paywall problems so I've screenshot the article and attached.

 

[FinkUFreaky]

Yeah not smart on it myself, but my general understanding is: don't have mental health issues if you want to be an airline pilot. So if you have some, better hide them? Kinda reminds me of hiding lots of personal health issues while on active duty, and taking ibuprofen etc as required to mitigate it. Better than being med down, right? Unless it was mental health and you might take your life... And the lives of others... It's a complicated issue for sure, but making the system set up so that you better make sure you hide your issues to keep your job might not be the BEST way to go about it.

 

[sevenhelmet]

Yikes. I hadn't heard about this one- tragic on a number of levels. Mental health is a huge issue that goes way outside aviation, and doesn't get enough time and energy devoted to it. We need to divorce ourselves culturally from some of our notions of what "broken" means and how we deal with it. Encouraging people to get counseling while their struggles are minor could help, before it becomes a full-blown crisis. Stay plugged in with your friends and loved ones, and make time to have meaningful conversations. Stay alert to human factors in the cockpit / on the job. Life goes a hell of a lot deeper than FB and aviation forums.

I'm not enough of an expert to make constructive suggestions beyond that.

 

[taxi1]

Mental health issues in college are common across all programs, big issue here at Big State U. Common enough to assume that if no one is talking to counselors in your flight program, then there are probably students keeping it hidden. Students operating aircraft.

Maybe a proactive “mental fitnesss” program analogous to one for physical fitness?

I really feel for his parents. What a horrible, horrible phone call to get.

 

[Brett327]

FWIW, I see a ton of references to various mental health issues in young adults in the online weather and photography social media outlets I follow. I don't know whether the 20-something demographic just feels more comfortable talking about it online, or if the problem is getting worse.

Jon Haidt, a prominent social psychologist who has written several very interesting books that I've enjoyed, has been vocal about the impact of social media on our youth... particularly on teenaged girls. This kind of thing impacts your Sailors, and your JOs. It's worth understanding.

Recommended articles:

The Dangerous Experiment on Teen Girls

The preponderance of the evidence suggests that social media is causing real damage to adolescents.

www.theatlantic.com

Opinion | This Is Our Chance to Pull Teenagers Out of the Smartphone Trap

Loneliness among students has soared worldwide. It doesn't have to be like that.

www.nytimes.com

Recommended Haidt books:
The Coddling of the American Mind
The Righteous Mind

Righteous Mind has a ton of great practical insights for leaders on how to effectively communicate with people across the range of moral and ethical perspectives. Both books are fascinating.

 

[jointhelocalizer]

Combing through the ALPA site, anything pilot mental health related is played to the tune of confidentiality. I think it it is a good thing there are ways to seek help without having any fear of repercussions. However, it brings to light the greater issue of how the FAA views mental health. A fatal flaw is the zero-risk mentality. I get it, the only way to prevent mental health issues from affecting aviation safety is to simply not allow it. However, pilots are human beings and can be born with or develop conditions. Also, the current SSRI pathways in use by the FAA are quite lengthy and still can result in a loss of medical. So I totally get why this young man felt trapped. I feel one of the intangibles of flying is the fact you can just focus on that one thing. In The Field Guide to Understand Human Error by Sidney Dekker, a concept regarding safety protocols mentioned cumbersome procedures as a commonly overlooked factor in safety incidents. If a procedure is to cumbersome (i.e. people cut corners or simply don't do it), the critical point of failure could be the procedure itself rather than the failure to follow it.

The intention might be there via the SSRI pathways, but they deter a lot of people in the process. I haven't really seen any studies on pilot performance while on SSRIs or some other treatment modality for mental health. I think one of the reasons is that allowing pilots to fly who are being treated for mental health conditions is deemed too risky.

On the concept of mental health becoming more prominent, I think that is dual-fold. One is that I think that the current generation experiences more anxiety/depression and is therefore more vocal about it. Social media provides a platform for us to curate our lives and show the highlights and how we are trucking through the lowlights. The picture that everyone has their life together and is soldiering through life while having these incredible experiences along the way can be quite distressing. Life isn't the movie everyone portrays online. That can be distressing when you feel like you're not batting 1.000. It is interesting that the same platform that can demonstrate and advocate for the destigmatization of mental health issues also causes them.

 

[Sam I am]

Update on the effort of the family to promote change regarding Aviation and Mental Health dissonance.

There's some good info in the video...the mishap did result in a pow wow between flight schools, airlines, and the FAA to talk about mental health.

Flight for Change: UND working with FAA to get pilots mental health help following sophomore pilot's suicide

In a series of notes 19-year-old John Hauser left for his parents he wrote, "life without flying was not worth living."

www.inforum.com

I don't know how long the link will work and it was featured on our local news here in Fargo. I'll try and find a link to the video. Here's the text from the article.

By Matt Henson
January 26, 2022 11:32 PM


GRAND FORKS — Some call it the wake-up call the aviation community needed about the seriousness of mental health in pilots.
The parents of University of North Dakota sophomore John Hauser said their son's final flight was a suicide.
The 19-year-old feared getting help for his building depression would end his dream of flying.
He left his parents a series of notes, writing "life without flying was not worth living."

He asked them to push the FAA for change so other pilots don't have to go through what he went through.

"There's nothing else like flying," said Emme Miller.
She is a senior in the aviation program at UND. She is one of the student voices pushing for change as a member of the Mental Health Task Force at UND.
"For aviation it feels very stigmatized and there's not really access to a lot of resources unless you might put your ability to fly at stake," she explained.
That was a fear of Hauser, who dreamed of being a commercial pilot since he was a little boy growing up in Chicago.
"There's a fear of just going to the doctor, period," said Bob Kraus, the dean of the aerospace program at UND.
The fear of losing that medical clearance and being grounded. A worry the dean of the aerospace program at UND says is not necessarily the case.
"When you look at what's actually happened to people who have sought treatment, very, very few of them actually lose their medical certificates," said Kraus.
For those who do get grounded, getting the OK to fly again could cost thousands of dollars. It's also a long process, especially for a four-year college student.

"Overall, there's no guarantee — no matter how much time you spend, no matter how much money you spend, there's no guarantee you'll get your medical and be able to fly," Miller explained. "I know people who have waited for years, and are still waiting to get their medical."
Following Hauser's suicide, UND organized a first of its kind summit with flight schools, major airlines and the FAA to discuss changing how the industry handles mental health.
"What really surprised us was the buy-in from the entire industry, so everyone from the FAA administrator all the way down to all of the airlines that participated and that surprised us a lot," Kraus said.
The FAA admits currently it may take them at least six months to review a pilot's case folder. The goal is to reduce that to 60 days by adding more psychiatrists.
At the college level, they plan on instilling into pilots the practice of talking early and often. The plan to accomplish that is to expand the peer support network on campus, including training for students. Also counselors will be more visible and embedded into the program, rather than having a student visit a clinical setting.
"The idea is to get people the help early, to talk through some of those issues, to build their resiliency skills, to build their coping skills, and help them get through smaller situations so when bigger circumstances happen, they are able to do deal with them better," explained Kraus.
Miller says this new flight path for mental health in the aviation industry is headed in the right direction to erase the stigma and barriers, but says the work is far from over.
"Facing the issue head on, they acknowledge the issue is real," Miller said. "But I think they can talk a lot but things actually need to happen."

Another big issue of discussion is which medicines a pilot can take. The FAA currently only approves of four medications.

Donations can be made to the John A. Hauser Mental Health in Aviation Initiative Fund at https://undalumni.org/JohnsFund.

 

[taxi1]

Students here at Big State U are seeking on-campus mental health services at over twice the rate of past years right now. Within the department I support, D and F grades are way more prevalent. It's a tough time right now for a lot of students.

 

[DanMa1156]

Students here at Big State U are seeking on-campus mental health services at over twice the rate of past years right now. Within the department I support, D and F grades are way more prevalent. It's a tough time right now for a lot of students.

This due to COVID mitigation strategies killing on campus social life, or what?

 

[Rocky 1776]

Question for all of you in lines with this thread...It might be uneducated in terms of policy, but I have been unable to find a straight answer... any advice to SNA/SNFO/SNFS's in receiving stress management coaching and/or mental helth counseling during Flight School? NAMI asked specifically about counseling at initial Upchit medical processing......If a student goes to see a counselor, is their upchit automatically in doubt or under review? Or would that only happen if an actual diagnosis where to occur?

 

[UInavy]

I know of no cases where mental health counseling has resulted in negative consequences for an aviator-though I'm confident it has occurred in severe cases. I know of multiple cases where it has been directed in response to performance, etc., and a person has responded / recovered well and continued aviating.

Bottom line- don't let fear of negative repercussions inhibit seeking advice for methods for self-care or receiving actual professional counseling.