Undoubtedly she opposed taking medication because she would not have been allowed to fly while taking it. This is a horrible policy because it causes depressed pilots (and, by the way, air traffic controllers) not to seek treatment. This is from the FAA website:PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (AP) -- Vicki Van Meter, who made headlines in the 1990s for piloting a plane across the United States at age 11 and from the U.S. to Europe at age 12, died in an apparent suicide. She was 26.
Van Meter died Saturday of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, the Crawford County coroner said. Her body was found in her Meadville, Pennsylvania, home on Sunday.
Her brother said she battled depression, but her family thought she had been dealing with her problems.
"She was unhappy, but it was hard for her to open up about that, and we all thought that she was coping," Daniel Van Meter said. He said she had opposed taking medication.
But take a look at this finding reported in New Scientist:Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are popularly prescribed for treating depression, but these antidepressants are not currently approved for use by U.S. civilian aviators.
Vickie van Meter didn't need to die. This is so tragic.Most air-safety authorities around the world ban pilots from flying while on antidepressant drugs citing safety reasons. Now the results of an Australian study suggests that taking the drugs does not increase the risk of accidents, while banning them could increase risks by encouraging depressed pilots not to seek treatment.
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Unlike most air safety authorities around the world, CASA allows Australian pilots to fly while on antidepressant drugs, under tightly controlled conditions.
For example, the pilot must have taken the drugs for at least a month before flying. This is to ensure that he or she is not suffering side-effects such as fatigue or nausea that could affect performance. Depressed pilots are also not allowed to fly if they have suicidal tendencies, pathological anger, or abnormal sleep patterns associated with the disorder.
Ms. Van Meter's oppposition to medication may or may not have been influenced by the FAA's policy. But to say this is definitely so is pure speculation. By all accounts she had abandoned flying after her Atlantic flight and had not been in the cockpit for sometime nor had she any plans to be so in the future.
ReplyDeleteRegardless, in my opinion, Ms. Van Meter's rejection of medication and the FAA's policy, are probably based on a certain level of ignorance about medications that treat mental illness, as is the case with most of the country.
Australia's policy seems to be most reasonable. Side-effects of these medications tend to disappear over a few weeks, and if they do not, then one should try something else. Not all medications work for all people. This is true of any medication, not just those that treat mental illness. Chemotherapy does not work for some cancer patients, for example.
There is a lot of misinformation about mental illness out there and about its treatments. Anti-depressants are over-prescribed. They are hyper-marketed. The newer ones are rushed to market and not properly tested. And none of them by themselves will solve anyone's problems. They are only part of the solution. It takes hard work to recover from mental illness.
But there are people out there who need them. And there are people out there for whom they work. And there are people out there whose lives have been in some part saved by them. Too bad Ms. Van Meter was not one of them.