Comment by kotaKat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kotaKat | Hacker News Reader

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It's the FAA's normal mental health brigade horseshit, except this time it's the FAA snooping around in VA records just because they can.

It looks like the veterans being targeted have various concerns like PTSD, which the FAA finds that as soon as you even think you're depressed, they want to revoke your pilots license because they think you'll immediately pull Some Shit in the air.

The average person has no clue how bad mental health is in the aviation sector and how hard it has to be hidden so they can actually keep doing what they love -- to fly.

See also: https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/pilots-crying-out-help...

> the FAA has subjected him to costly frequent drug tests, and doctor's visits with FAA-approved experts who don't accept insurance

> the FAA wouldn't accept other doctor's notes saying that he was perfectly fine to fly a plane

The FAA throws up some massive gates as soon as you get flagged like this and forces you to go to a battery of doctors and psychs that only they can apparently decide your fate.

Right, its not like hundreds of people's lives are in these pilot's hands. I can't imagine what a depressed pilot might do..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525

Perfectly competent pilots have killed more people than depressed ones since the beginning of flight. Empirically, non-depressed pilots are more of a risk to the public. But they don't get this kind of stigma.

It’s also one of the more glaring issues still present in regard to mental health stigmatization - that people with mental health issues are a danger to others.

The overwhelming majority of people experiencing mental health issues are only a danger to themselves (worst case).

The differences in suicide rates compared to murder-suicide rates back this up but per usual extremely rare cases or murder-suicide grab headlines while the 125 suicides per day on average in the US are completely unknown to anyone other than the people personally impacted by them.

Not only are murder-suicides sensational, the “murder” component bypasses the otherwise standard media practice of not reporting on suicides because of the data on upticks in additional suicides due to reporting.

Do you know what prevents people from doing that? Being able to get help for their problems. Do you know what doesn't? Forcing them to hide their problems so they are able to keep their job.

The discussion isn't really about whether suicidal pilots should be allowed to fly - it's whether the system should allow for pilots with mental health concerns (which would be a large majority of them over the course of an entire career) to seek treatment for it without losing their job.

100% Exactly this.

It's outright irresponsible to not take into account the chilling effect this is going to have on seeking treatment for mental health problems.

To speak a little more to this - there's a lot of jokes in the aviation community about mental health.. such as "Do you know how many pilots the FAA claims have mental health issues? None. Do you know how many pilots lie about their mental health issues? All of them."

When I have students go in for a medical, even if they're just gonna be run of the mill private pilots, I tell them "Answer every question with as few words as possible. If the AME (medical examiner) asks you if you've ever been sad, say "No". 'What about when your dad died?' Say no. When you got that diagnosis for cancer five years ago? Wasn't sad. Puppy died as a child? Wasn't sad. Never sad. Never anxious. Never depressed. Never anything. Just cool like Steve McQueen. If it's not in your medical records then it never happened.

then I get asked who the hell is Steve McQueen.

If you crash the plane if you are depressed the reason is not that you are depressed. The reason is you are a psychopath.

Mmm, keep spreading that paranoia and lack of compassion for people with mental health disorders.

There are depressed people in every single aspect of human society, including the scary critical ones people like you fear.

Unfortunately, people like you who think this is an actual talking point make it impossible for the people who need help in critical positions to get that help by stigmatizing the existence of the issue in the first place.

People like you who cherry pick the negative outcomes of mental health disorders while ignoring that most suffer in silence for the "safety" of others like you are the problem.

Advocating against yourself. Lack of freedom is a grand cause of the world we live in today - revoking more of it is how you end up on the wrong side of that.

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