Melburnian1
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2013
- Posts
- 25,483
This study may be over hyped but it's receiving a fair bit of media attention:
Thousands of airline pilots flying every day with suicidal thoughts, says landmark study
If 12.6 per cent of surveyed pilots have depression that does not strike me as anything radically different from the general Australian population.
Similarly if four per cent of pilots have 'considered' killing themselves, again that might be no different from the general population. The much more important statistic is how many actually do this - and while tragic whenever it occurs (and in some age groups, rising, sadly in Australia) it is not a huge number overall compared to total Australian mortality rates (although from memory in one or two age groups suicide is a major cause of death.)
While 'international' in nature, we also don't know from the brief media article whether the study had correct weighting in replies say from mainland Chinese, other Asian, Russian, South American and African flight crew or whether it was overly biased with staff from Western airlines (or Westerners generally - Cathay Pacific with its British roots is one airline that while 'Asian' has large numbers of pilots from the UK and Oz among other nationalities.)
How many RPT pilots would there be worldwide: 500,000?
I'll leave it to the mental health experts but note the expert comment in the article about not demonising pilots (or others) who have (for instance) depression. That seems pretty sensible.
Thousands of airline pilots flying every day with suicidal thoughts, says landmark study
If 12.6 per cent of surveyed pilots have depression that does not strike me as anything radically different from the general Australian population.
Similarly if four per cent of pilots have 'considered' killing themselves, again that might be no different from the general population. The much more important statistic is how many actually do this - and while tragic whenever it occurs (and in some age groups, rising, sadly in Australia) it is not a huge number overall compared to total Australian mortality rates (although from memory in one or two age groups suicide is a major cause of death.)
While 'international' in nature, we also don't know from the brief media article whether the study had correct weighting in replies say from mainland Chinese, other Asian, Russian, South American and African flight crew or whether it was overly biased with staff from Western airlines (or Westerners generally - Cathay Pacific with its British roots is one airline that while 'Asian' has large numbers of pilots from the UK and Oz among other nationalities.)
How many RPT pilots would there be worldwide: 500,000?
I'll leave it to the mental health experts but note the expert comment in the article about not demonising pilots (or others) who have (for instance) depression. That seems pretty sensible.
