More than 12 percent of active airline pilots are managing symptoms of depression, “perhaps without the possibility of treatment due to the fear of negative career impacts,” according to a study published on December 15 by BioMed Central and reviewed by Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Pilots were recruited from unions, airlines and airports to take the anonymous web-based cross-sectional survey conducted between April and December 2015.
Of an estimated worldwide population of 140,000 airline pilots, nearly 3,500 pilots completed the survey. Of those, 1,848, identified in the report as airline pilots, responded to the survey’s Patient Health Questionnaire 9 (PHQ-9), an established anonymous test for evaluating risk of clinical depression. Of those, 233 (12.6 percent) met the PHQ-9 standards for clinical depression, characterized by at least two weeks of depressed mood or loss of interest accompanied by at least four additional symptoms. Further, 193 pilots who met the criteria were among the 1,430 who reported having worked “as an airline pilot within the last seven days.” Seventy-five participants, or 4.1 percent, reported having suicidal thoughts within the two weeks before taking the survey.
For context, the researchers reported that 13 percent of previously deployed military personnel, 7 percent of U.S. emergency medical technicians and 10 to 17 percent of U.S. police officers also met the same PHQ-9 criteria as the pilots. In the U.S., 21 percent of people will suffer some form of mood disorder, including clinical depression, over their lifetime, they wrote.
aThe study’s authors acknowledged that the anonymous nature of the survey compromises the integrity of the data, but point out that such anonymous studies balance out studies that identify subjects, leading them to repress reporting their depression symptoms for fear of compromising their careers. “Although results have limited generalizability, there are a significant number of active pilots suffering from depressive symptoms,” the study notes. It recommends that aircraft operators increase support for preventative mental health treatment for pilots. The research group plans to conduct future studies to evaluate additional risk factors for depression that affect pilots, such as sleep and circadian rhythm disturbances.