FAA Mental Health ARC claims female pilots have higher rates of medical anxiety

The Federal Aviation Administration released a report on the mental health of pilots and air traffic controllers on Monday. The report is the result of a study by the Mental Health and Aviation Medical Clearance Rulemaking Committee, which the FAA established in December.

Their efforts are in response to growing concerns about the FAA’s process for governing the certification of pilots and air traffic controllers who may have mental health issues. The commission’s report suggests that certain marginalized groups, including female pilots, are more reluctant to receive medical care than male pilots.

However, this claim is based on a limited study of 154 female pilots.

Marginalized groups dislike healthcare more

The Mental Health and Aviation Medical Clearance Board wrote in its report: “Data suggest that unique subpopulations within these groups, such as young people, women, and student pilots, face uniquely high levels of medical anxiety and medical avoidance when compared to other populations. These data suggest that subpopulations may face unique barriers, and as the aviation workforce becomes increasingly diverse, those barriers become more pressing. There is a possibility. ”

However, when the committee looks more closely at the supporting data on which this conclusion is based, it explicitly mentions this study.Medical-related aversion and care-seeking patterns among female aviators in the United States. ” This study is based on a small sample of the population, is not specific to mental health, and recommends further research.

An excerpt from the study reads:

“The proportion of female pilots in the United States is increasing, and data on health care-seeking behavior among this cohort are sparse. We conducted an online survey. 83.7% of female pilots have experienced medical-related harassment, compared to 27.5% of non-pilots. 66.7% of female pilots have withheld information from their doctor. and 46.0% delayed or postponed treatment due to health concerns. Further research needs to be conducted to inform policy changes to address barriers to pilot care.”

The committee explicitly writes that the “subgroup” has “uniquely high” aversion to medical treatment “compared to other populations,” but does not provide similar data on male pilots.

For comparison, a 2023 study by the Cleveland Clinic of 1,000 online survey participants found that “83% of men have experienced stress in the past six months, but most do not seek professional help. It turns out that many people are hesitant to ask for help.

If so, the small number of female pilots in this study would be more in line with the male population in their reluctance to seek medical care for any reason. This may suggest that the occupation itself is a deterrent to seeking care.

Non-FAA medical care can negatively impact a pilot’s career.

The FAA’s Mental Health ARC report examines how diagnoses and medications prescribed by psychiatrists and other health care providers who are not trained in FAA requirements can negatively impact a pilot’s career. , which also details how the process of obtaining medical clearance to fly should be improved.

According to the report, one of the challenges for all pilots is covering medical costs. To obtain insurance coverage for mental health treatment, some medical professionals may diagnose other conditions.

They wrote:

“The U.S. health insurance system typically only pays for ‘sickness’, if at all. As outlined by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), equity in mental health care remains an issue. Generally speaking, if someone seeks care for something that is not an “illness” (such as the death of a child, marriage counseling, or dealing with work stress), insurance won’t cover it. As a result, individuals either have to pay out-of-pocket or healthcare providers end up attaching diagnosis codes to individuals’ bills for the insurance company to pay, so that the individual does not actually have the disease. You will be labeled with a disease that you may not have. This “upcoding” can be particularly problematic for pilots/controllers when it comes to recertification, as they may have been “diagnosed” with a much more serious mental illness than what they are experiencing. . ”

In this sense, female pilots have the potential to: be adversely affected. In 2017, the American Psychiatric Association found that “doctors are more likely to diagnose depression in women compared to men, even if the genders have the same symptoms or similar scores on standardized depression measures.” ‘is high.’ Additionally, the association found that “women are more likely than men to be prescribed psychotropic medications.”

FAA guidelines place strict limits on the types of medications pilots can take while cleared to fly. The Mental Health ARC review included a comparative study of what prescriptions are allowed by the FAA and other civil aviation regulators and found a lack of agreement between the two.

Is the population of diverse pilots growing in the United States?

I told the FAA that the aviation industry is “increasingly diverse” or has an “increasing proportion” of female pilots, as studies cited by ARC suggest, according to Mental Health ARC’s statement. We sought data to support this. The validity of these claims is relative to expectations.

The FAA shared pilot demographic data with me for this report.

• Total number of U.S. pilots in all categories, including students, recreational pilots, sport pilots, private pilots, commercial pilots, airline pilots, and rotorcraft and glider pilots, over the past 10 years from 2014 to the end of 2023 increased by 26% from 593,499 to 806,940.
• The number of licensed female pilots in all categories more than doubled from 39,322 in 2014 to 82,817 in 2023. Still, women make up only 10.2% of the total number of licensed pilots.
• Although women make up only 5% of the U.S. airline pilot population, that number has increased by 49.9% from 6,408 in 2014 to 9,071 by 2023. During this period, the total number of airline pilots increased by 14%, from 152,933 to 174,113.
• The average age of airline pilots in 2023 is 50.4 years old, with the largest group (24.784 people) being between 55 and 59 years old.
• The average age of female airline pilots in 2023 was 44.8 years, and the largest cohort of female airline pilots (1,170) was between 40 and 44 years old.
• The number of student pilot certificates issued by the FAA each month increased from 47,407 in 2014 to 69,503 in 2023.

Representation on the Mental Health ARC Committee

Members of the Mental Health and Aviation Medical Clearance Rulemaking Committee include U.S. aviation industry trade associations, pilot and air traffic controller representative organizations, academia, and medical professionals.

The FAA did not confirm the demographics of the current group when I asked. However, the ARC’s 2015 report on pilot mental fitness shows that the total number of ARC, observer and medical working group members was 42. Six of them were women, including one FAA aerospace medicine physician who chaired the medical task force.

In response to my questions about the ARC’s claims against women pilots, the FAA referred me to an April 1 statement saying it would consider the committee’s recommendations.