NTSB Safety Summit - Navigating Mental Health in Aviation (Panel 3) 

If we're talking about mental health and aviation safety, it's odd to go through all three of these panels--ignoring what as a former aviation professional--I would consider 'the elephant in the room.' Risk-takers. That's the group which all by itself provides the greatest mental-health-related danger. No other single mental-health factor has such a profound and immediate negative safety impact; not depression, not anxiety, not ADHD, not even substance-abuse. And people with a risk-taking mentality are also statistically the least likely at-risk group to seek mental health support for other issues, or in the case of major life events. If we align the various mental-health related risk-groups, and apply triage--we reveal the obvious: If there were ever any single screenable, identifiable, mental-health issue which should be considered disqualifying--it'd be the risk-tolerant mentality / risk-taking personality type. NTSB and FAA accident data provides abundant support for this. Yes. It's the risk-takers who put us at risk. These are the people the FAA should be constantly and repeatedly screening for--and drumming out--beginning with student pilots. Everybody can name the risk-takers in their organization, the ones at their local airfields, the ones in their flying clubs... It's pretty easy--so the FAA shouldn't find it that hard to identify them either. A safe systems approach demands we get the risk-takers out of the safety sensitive aviation jobs. Off the screens, off the wrenches, off the radios, off the rudder-pedals. And a great deal of the risk-taker fatalities which occur in General Aviation include people who were trying to build hours on their way to a career in the Part 121 world. None of those people should have to die--they should simply be encouraged to find another career. Don't get me wrong--people with a thrill-seeking risk-tolerant mentality should still be allowed to enjoy airplane rides--but only when safely buckled into passenger seats. Yet the FAA's current policy puts the good actors--who by seeking mental health assistance demonstrate they're actually risk-averse--the FAA puts those help-seekers under their regulatory microscope; while the FAA simultaneously continues--as they have for decades--to turn a blind eye to the most dangerous, pervasive, and insidious mental-health issue in aviation: Those with risk-tolerant mentalities and risk-taking personalities. Current FAA policy fails--as illustrated in these panels, and as stated--to adopt a 'just culture.' Current FAA policy also fails to screen for, identify, and deny licenses to applicants with risk-tolerant tendencies. Therefore, current FAA policy also fails to align with the pillars of their own SMS. Fortunately for the FAA, they sent their best representative--and these panels were full of eager partners--ready, and willing to help the FAA develop a new policy. Thank you, NTSB for hosting this Safety Summit!

C-5 "Galaxy" Flight Engineer, UNITED STATES AIR FORCE [ 1982--1998 ] , --- at your service.. !

I keep thinking of that clip of the old dude from SpongeBob... "I _love_ the young people!"

Will she answer to her appointed title, "Madam Chairman"?