Hepl With Medical

On Sat, 27 Mar 2010 12:40:52 -0400, Mike Ash wrote:

In article ,
U?Ari U? wrote:

On Sat, 27 Mar 2010 11:57:03 -0400, Mike Ash wrote:

In article ,
U?Ari U? wrote:

On Fri, 26 Mar 2010 22:27:50 -0400, Mike Ash wrote:

In article ,
U?Ari U? wrote:

On Fri, 26 Mar 2010 17:37:34 -0400, Mike Ash wrote:

In article ,
U?Ari U? wrote:

On Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:35:33 -0400, Mike Ash wrote:

I find their policy toward psychiatric conditions to be especially
terrible. From what I understand, the medications used to treat
problems
such as depression are considered disqualifying by the FAA. So let's
say
I'm a private pilot in a class that needs a medical and I suspect
that
I
have depression. What do I do? If I value my ability to fly, I keep
it
to myself and do not seek treatment! No AME will be able to detect
that
I suffer from depression if I don't seek treatment and am careful to
hide it from him.

You got to be ****ting me.

Have you never been around a truly manic/bi-polar crazoid? They
haven't a clue what they are doing and if they don't manage their
meds, which when they are crazoid they don't, they get craziodier.

There's a reason I mentioned depression as an example. A person
suffering from moderate depression could go through life never knowing
he had a problem. He could get an FAA medical and a PPL and go flying.
Then one day he realizes he has a problem, gets a prescription for
Prozac from his doctor, is on his way to better mental health, but now
the FAA decides he's no longer safe to fly. It makes no sense and
places
some strong perverse incentives in the system.

How can this person go from a no problem state to "I've got a problem"
state if he hasn't changed his depressive state? If he is depressed
and it's okey dokey with him, then the assumption is that his
depression isn't harmful to himself or others. Inconvenient maybe,
yeah, but it isn't adversely affecting his daily life.

This does not follow. A person can be depressed and not know what's
going on. It is not uncommon for depression to be diagnosed years after
it begins. The sufferer himself has no baseline for comparison, and
those around him think it's just personality. Then maybe he starts
wondering why he feels X and Y and Z, happens across a list of
depression symptoms, connects the dots, sees a doctor, gets a
prescription, and loses his medical.

There are certainly mental illnesses which mean that the sufferer
should
never be PIC of anything. But there are a lot of mental illnesses which
won't interfere with one's ability to pilot an airplane, and the FAA's
blanket denial of medicals to anyone taking any sort of medication for
them is, in my view, a bad thing. If they're going to require medicals
for light aircraft, it ought to be much more nuanced than this.

I would imagine the FAA is denying because of the potential
prescriptive side effects you know like "Don't Use Heavy Machinery"
like airplanes stuff.

Not the mental health issues.

It's possible, but I don't see how that would be justified either. The
listed side effects for e.g. Prozac don't look very bad in this regard.
There is the possibility of nausea, loss of coordination, trouble
concentrating, and things of that nature, but I don't think they're
common, and ordinary people can have those problems as well. Given that
millions of people take it, I'll bet a lot of them are regularly
operating heavy machinery such as cars.

According to this page, the FAA prohibits all psychotropic medications
regardless of what they a

http://www.leftseat.com/psychiatric.htm

Do they all have nasty side effects that would make a pilot unsafe? It
doesn't seem likely. Even if they *might* have such side effects,
wouldn't it be better to see how the drug affects the individual in
question rather than having a blanket ban?

Yes, let's test each and every individual after each and every dose
and see if they are capable of each and every...

Are you a Mx clone?

We do it for physical problems. If you have a heart attack, or heart
surgery, or other things of that nature, it is not automatically
disqualifying. Instead, the doctor and the FAA get together and decide
whether you're fit to fly. It's far from an automatic no. If they can do
it for heart problems, why not for brain problems?

Mike, I'd tell you but I doubt your brain would accept the answer.

Yes, why engage in a discussion when you can just throw insults around?

I'm trying to remember why I stay subscribed to this group, and am not
coming up with any answers....

There ya' go. You can't answer your own known issues, why would you
expect me to argue in circles with you about things you know little to
nothing about?

That what MxTheIgnoramus is for.
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