Fact or Fiction: FAA Continues to Remove Barriers/Reduce Stigma for Mental Illness in Pilots

[Wheresmychute]

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.

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.

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).

 

[TCABM]

Yes, I guess that is an issue, however, there should be plenty of data on SSRI usage in general. …

While I appreciate your passion, there is an significant lack of understanding of the FAAs by law requirements re: medical standards to certify an applicant’s history.


Every.
Single.
Special issuance is the administrator applying an exception to the law. Risks stack, sometimes exponentially, and the only data the adjudicators have is what’s provided in the records by medical professionals. Some of whom aren’t certified to make the diagnoses they’ve made so insurers will pay for a prescription.

If you want real reform, understand the problem first.

 

[Wheresmychute]

While I appreciate your passion, there is an significant lack of understanding of the FAAs by law requirements re: medical standards to certify an applicant’s history.


Every.
Single.
Special issuance is the administrator applying an exception to the law. Risks stack, sometimes exponentially, and the only data the adjudicators have is what’s provided in the records by medical professionals. Some of whom aren’t certified to make the diagnoses they’ve made so insurers will pay for a prescription.

If you want real reform, understand the problem first.

So, require the applicant see a board-certified psychiatrist. A lot of these issues are not huge. Most of them result from FAA inefficiency, like still using physical mail, requiring cogscreens, etc...

The accept/failure rate is actually really decent. It just takes forever to get there.

The "law" also happens to be very behind.