Mental/Emotional Health
 

I’m writing a research paper for school. My topic is the mental/emotional health of pilots in the transportation industry. I’m not talking about people with clinical diagnosis like schizophrenia or bi-polar, I’m mostly addressing depression, anxiety, and stress and how it affects performance as a pilot. Because I am only a student and I am not yet in the field, I’d like to get some insight from those of you with direct experience.

What does the industry have to offer regarding treatment or support? When in the flight deck, how does your co-pilot’s “bad day” (or chronic bad days) affect the flight? If a pilot is having a “bad day” is that a justified reason to call in sick or does management disapprove? Any and other pertinent comments are welcome. Thanks.

Man, this is a big can of worms you've opened!

Pilots have to be good at "compartmentalization", that is, we have to be able to leave anything from our personal lives that would distract us from our piloting out of the cockpit. In almost every major air mishap, there were causal factors in the aircrew's personal life, like divorce, tax or financial problems, substance abuse, lack of sleep etc.

If a pilot is not good at doing this, he or she drags the other crewmember down with them, degrading the overall performance of the crew. It is the Captains responsibility to notice this and correct it, either by removing himself or the other crewmember, or by drawing attention to the situation so we can refocus of what we're doing. It's easy to be distracted by smalltalk.

In short, depression, anxiety and stress have a HUGE negative impact on our performance as a pilot, but if we are good at compartmentalizing those things, then we mitigate this negative impact.

And yes, a bad day is a justifiable reason to call in sick. Management may not approve, but the pilot himself is the only judge of his or her fitness for duty, and if for ANY reason, a pilot judges that they are not fit for a particular duty period, they are OBLIGATED to call in sick. Our priorities for flight are SAFE, LEGAL, RELIABLE. In that order.