The Sunday Read: ‘Why Airline Pilots Feel Pushed to Hide Their Mental Illness’

周日读物:《为何飞行员感到被迫隐藏他们的心理疾病》

The Daily

新闻

2025-03-30

47 分钟
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Troy Merritt, a pilot for a major U.S. airline, returned from his 30th birthday trip in Croatia in October 2022 — sailing on a catamaran, eating great food, socializing with friends — and cried. This wasn’t back-to-work blues but collapsed-on-the-floor, full-body-shaking misery. When he wasn’t crying, he slept. “I’ve got to find a therapist,” he told himself. And he did, quickly. If that therapist didn’t write down “depression,” Merritt would be OK. He could still fly planes, keep his job — as long as he wasn’t diagnosed with a mental illness. Merritt, like all pilots, knew that if he was formally diagnosed with a mental-health condition, he might never fly a plane again.
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  • My name is Helen Oyang.

  • I'm an emergency physician and I'm a contributor to the New York Times Magazine.

  • For decades,

  • the Federal Aviation Administration had strict rules around the mental health of pilots.

  • Pilots who were diagnosed with any kind of mental health disorder like depression were not allowed to fly.

  • Almost half of all Americans will experience mental illness at some point in their lifetime.

  • So why would pilots working in one of the most demanding isolating occupations be any different?

  • Every single pilot I interviewed for my New York Times Magazine story had withheld some kind of underlying medical issue or knew of a colleague who did