Wheresmychute
Filing Flight Plan
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- Apr 11, 2024
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Wheresmychute
Yes, I guess that is an issue, however, there should be plenty of data on SSRI usage in general. Its a bit of a conundrum because its hard to study pilots who fly on SSRI's when pilots are afraid to take SSRI's because the FAA doesn't want them to.One of the limitations up front was the number of published research studies of pilot use of SSRIs. That’s the kind of data the FAA needs. It doesn’t exist.
I think you do not need to specifically study pilots though. While piloting is a high-risk and high-stress job, all people who those moments in life even if it isn't their career (and many besides pilots do have careers with those traits). You can study a population and determine if some symptoms of the medication would be trouble for pilots, for example, drowsiness.
So you need a study to say, "The likelihood of experiencing X side-effect 4 months or later after date of prescription is .5%, which is outside of the confidence interval, therefore we cannot confidently say that its the result of the medication."
And all the FAA needs to do is monitor the pilot for 4-months to see if they experience drowsiness, and if they don't, they can be confident the medication is not having that effect.
Though I do not want to wade through all the papers on SSRI's for a forum discussion. I also don't particularly think thats what matters to the FAA, its not hard to tell if medication is good or not.
What the FAA has trouble with, is mental health diagnosis in general. Its a legal mess. If some pilot injures themself or others in an aircraft AND the FAA knew they had *insert mental illness here*, but still allowed them to fly, then they are in big trouble. This can be solved by the FAA figuring out which mental illness would lead to this behavior and disqualifying those, but they do not want to go through the trouble (and money).