Ron, it does say specialist.......or do you just read the convenient parts?
And who would the specialist for depression be.....?
Dr. Chien, I am not read up on the underlying law or the relevant FAA interpretations on CFR’s.
However if there is an absence of a defined definition narrowing it down to a
psychiatric specialist in the relevant law/CFR’s, then, potentially a legitimate case could be made to view it as a legislative loophole.
Take commercial driver’s licenses, DOT has a medical procedure that must be passed, but they include chiropractors as authorized to sign off for medicals. Does that make any sense to anyone here? Do we truly believe a chiropractor is qualified in addressing those physicals and not just signing off for a appointment fee, regardless of whatever basic training DOT gave them?
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39383366
https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/faq/who-can-serve-medical-examiner-and-perform-dot-physical-exams
From personal experience I can attest to, in the firearms business we do with this all the time. A good example would be bumpstocks, it increased the rate of fire to near that of a machine gun, any average person off the street uninformed on the specifics of how it worked probably would call it a machine gun, but
technically it doesn’t meet the statutory definition. And in all likelihood the 2019 ban will be struck down eventually at scotus due to a circuit split.
https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/2021/0...-circuits-and-invalidates-the-bump-stock-ban/
(Granted it will be appealed and heard en banc ).
Is it unethical? Probably. However if they made the statue too vague then that’s their fault. I have little sympathy for the FAA for keeping their psychiatric medical policy looking like it was copied from the 1950s. If OP can otherwise safely conduct their duties on a single SSRI, then I’d say try it.
Personally I’d love to flip the proverbial bird and have a chiropractor or licensed massage therapist attempt to sign off, “Tension headaches were negatively affecting my sleep, which was causing my ADHD to get worse”/s (Not that my psychiatrist wouldn’t sign off for me).