Of course all of those people have not applied for a special issuance. No one claimed they had. The point was that special issuances were not a routine thing.

According to the American Psychological Association 12.7% of the US population over age 12 took SSRIs in the last MONTH:

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2017/11/numbers

Now those taking them were not evenly distributed, with twice as many females taking them as males and three times as many adult non-Black and non-Hispanics taking them as blacks or Hispanics and people over 60 somewhat over represented, and of course none of those stats give the number of either pilots or ATP holders taking the medication, but amongst the pilots and ATP holders themselves we certainly have a fair number of people who are Caucasians over sixty.

I don’t believe it is “nonsense” to say that 200 hundred total issuances for all pilots or 50 for ATP holders show that relative to the population one would EXPECT to meet criteria for taking SSRIs this is a rare event.

It isn’t “nonsense” to use the best statistics you can get which remains that out of that population, that demographic (total pilots and ATP holders) those are the stats you can get.

Are there pilots taking them and NOT reporting to the FAA? Almost certainly. Are there pilots who have reported taking them and applied for special issuances who have been denied them that are still reported in the denominators? Yes there are.

Is the pilot population somehow less depressed than the general population? Possibly, although you certainly wouldn’t know it from reading the APC forum. And for damn sure not the Atlas threads.

And in conclusion:

https://youtu.be/B65mtE2TN1w