Pilot mental health

The cockpit door worked perfectly and was intended to keep the enemy from without – out! No-one thought that there would be an enemy within who would keep a fellow pilot – or rescuers – out.

Any new work-around to bypass the security of the door would surely leave open the possibility that terrorists could force the door open.

The ongoing testing of pilots’ mental health came under intense scrutiny but again there appears to be no simple solution.

Many of us have become experts in internalising our problems and men can turn it into an art form. Speak to anyone close to a suicide and they will tell you the same thing: “We had no idea – there were no signs. ” Perhaps what is needed is a broader review of a pilot’s lifestyle, work conditions and stresses. Certainly it is not the job it was 20 or 30 years ago.

In recent years there have been a number of incidents where pilots have had breakdowns on the job.

In March 2012, 49-year old jetBlue Captain Clayton Osbon had an incident while flying an Airbus A320 from New York to Las Vegas.

Osbon had had a perfect flying record but on the day of the flight began muttering to the control tower “things just don’t matter” before telling his co-pilot they weren’t going to Vegas.

Next he started yelling about bombs and that they were going to crash. Fortunately Captain Osbon left the cockpit and went to the rear lavatory and the co-pilot acted quickly.

He summoned an off duty pilot and then triggered the cockpit door locking mechanism to prevent the captain’s return. The captain was restrained by passengers and later charged but let off on the grounds of “insanity”, the judge noting he suffered from a “severe mental disease or defect”.

In January 2008 an Air Canada Boeing 767 with 146 passengers and nine crew flying from Toronto to London was diverted to Shannon after the 58-year old co-pilot became “belligerent, uncooperative, confused and disoriented. ” He had arrived for the flight “harried” and fatigued and after taking a couple of rest breaks suffered an apparent nervous breakdown. The captain removed him from cockpit and had him restrained. He was later treated in a psychiatric unit for 11 days before being released.

More attention should be given to mental health issues during the aeromedical assessment of pilots.

Dr Philip Scarpa, the deputy chief medical officer of NASA and the president of the Aerospace Medical Association (AsMA) says in the paper ‘Mental Health Screening in Aviators’, delivered last year in Bucharest, Romania, that “serious mental health illness involving sudden psychosis are rela

tively rare, and their onset is impossible to predict. ” He stated that an AsMA working group found that “an extensive psychiatric evaluation as part of the routine pilot aeromedical assessment is neither productive nor cost-effective and therefore not warranted. ” However, it did find that “more attention should be given to mental health issues during the aeromedical assessment of pilots. ” Dr Scarpa said that there are many other mental health conditions, such as depression, anxiety/panic disorders, and substance misuse, which are far more common, show patterns that facilitate early detection, and the industry has proven effective treatment strategies.

Further, suggests Dr Scarpa, these methods, which consist of questions and interview techniques, will have minor impact on the current examination and should not prove burdensome for the pilot or examining physician.

Of course pilot suicides, while exceptionally rare, are not new with 12 suspected in the last 40 years. But this one is somehow different because the evident cause became known just days after the crash making the impact far greater and confronting.