1. If the pilot hides his mental illness, a mentally ill person is flying the airplane.
2. If the pilot gets treatment for his mental illness, a mentally ill person is flying the plane.
P.S. When I was a teenager, I tried to join the Air Force to be a pilot like my dad. But since I wear glasses, there was no way. The AF was perfectly justified in not taking me, I understood that. I empathize with the rejected pilots, but that's the way it has to be. Life isn't fair. So I chose another career.
Where's option 3: a pilot gets treatment for his mental illness and is signed off as safe to fly a plane? For all that it's a fallible process, that seems better than options 1 & 2.
Does it? I've never heard of anyone being cured of mental illness, just drugs that relieve the symptoms. The body develops resistance to the drugs, the drugs usually come with bad side effects, and patients often go off their meds.
Pilots who develop a heart condition get their license revoked. Every pilot knows this. There's nothing fair about that, either.
Fun fact - my Air Force dad told me that when an airplane was overhauled, the chief mechanic went up on the check ride. That ensured the job was well done.
It seems trivial that it's better than option 1; in both cases a mentally ill person is flying the plane, and in one of them a health professional is involved in managing the condition.
For option 2 I'll confess to not being sufficiently familiar with the gamut of what can be considered a mental illness, such that I couldn't tell you whether a person under management for such is a safer pilot than someone undiagnosed, or the median pilot. I'd be mildly surprised if you were, but stranger things have happened.
As it stands, I expect these would be the same diagnostics that until ~2013 considered sexual preferences as mental health issues.
Mental health is indeed an inexact and poorly understood condition.
As pragmatic rule, if one is prescribed drugs for it, one is not fit for being a pilot.
I know several people who are prescribed drugs for mental conditions. I would not get on an airplane if they were the pilot. Nor would I get on one with a pilot with a heart condition. It doesn't mean they are bad people, it's just the way it is.
well in case 2, the pilot get treatment and a doctor will decide if she is fit to fly. That's not bulletproof but still better than case 1.
And to your other point, it's easier to give up on your dream job when young and start with a career that you are a fit for, than to be kicked out after a huge sunk cost and maybe even half way to retirement (illnesses might not be known until later in life). Just as disappointing, but not nearly as life destroying.
I was prescribed glasses when I was 5. Since then, they have preserved my eyes from damage from at least 3 incidents. I no longer mind them - I like the protection!
This is like saying that we've had a problem with people piloting with pneumonia, so anybody sniffling or taking sudafed won't be allowed to pilot (the FAA is fine with sudafed). One hopes that getting pilots early treatment for incipient mental health issues would help ensure that they don't wind up with more serious issues.
It looks like the FAA has within the last few years gotten chiller about some antidepressants, but that they still require an elaborate and complicated process to approve use of them.
Those don't have to be the only two options. You can also criminalize hiding your mental illness as a pilot while incentivizing self-reporting via sufficiently generous disability insurance.
tangent: I believe Air Force and Navy have loosen the vision requirement quite a bit. IIRC the new rule only measures the corrected vision, regardless how you corrected it, including wearing glasses.
My dad had 20/10 vision. He was always first to identify enemy aircraft. They didn't have onboard radar at the time.
Wearing glasses still has issues. I have astigmatism, and so if I turn my eyes but not my head, I receive a warped view of the world. This is why I was simply terrible at baseball, tennis, etc. My brain could not adapt to this. I have difficulties with depth perception as a result, too.
I was more or less born to be a nerd. It's pointless to fight my fate :-)
1. If the pilot hides his mental illness, a mentally ill person is flying the airplane.
2. If the pilot gets treatment for his mental illness, a mentally ill person is flying the plane.
P.S. When I was a teenager, I tried to join the Air Force to be a pilot like my dad. But since I wear glasses, there was no way. The AF was perfectly justified in not taking me, I understood that. I empathize with the rejected pilots, but that's the way it has to be. Life isn't fair. So I chose another career.