Take stress management in aviation seriously – Dr. Akparibo urges aviators
An aerospace medical specialist, Dr. Issaka Yakubu Akparibo, has urged aviation professionals to take mental health and stress management seriously, as the aviation sector remains one of the industries where stressors abound.
Dr. Akparibo, who is the Medical Director at Careflight Ghana, speaking during a recent Webinar organised by the Ghana Air Traffic Controllers’ Association (GHATCA), noted that: “Aviation is the major mode of transport and persons working in aviation especially pilots and air traffic controllers, need to be mentally and physically fit to carry out their duties safely.
We know that the machine hardly fails, so our control equipment, the aircraft, and all that normally don’t fail. So we see most of the time it’s human errors that cause most of the aviation accident and we know that about 90% of aviation accident is caused by human error.”
The mental health of aviators is a major concern for airlines, regulatory bodies, and passengers. This is so because problems among pilots, especially, are a threat to flight safety and the results of psychological illness can be a catastrophe as we witnessed with the German Wings incident in 2015.”
The prevalence of mental health in the general Ghanaian population is about 10%. So that means one out of every 10 persons probably will have an episode of mental illness in a year.
The common stressors, identified by Dr. Akparibo, that normally cause mental illness amongst the aviation community include the nature of crew selection, the nature of the training and even how to maintain your license, the medical standards and requirements on the aviator, their job stressors and then also personal stressors.
Airline pilots and ATCs are evaluated regularly throughout their professional careers to ensure that they are fit to fly or work. A Class One pilot must have medicals every year until they turn 4O years old. After 40 years, they are required to have medicals every six months until they are 60 years old. Air traffic controllers, in most jurisdictions, must also have yearly medical exams. And cabin crew is also yearly.
This Dr. Akparibo reckons, puts a lot of strain on these aviation professionals. “I haven’t seen any occupation that undergoes regular medicals than in the aviation community. Even medical doctors don’t undergo this kind of rigorous medical checks. So you can see that the life of an aviator is so packed. You need to undergo all these tests to do your normal work,” he said.