WASHINGTON — The government is lifting a 70-year-old ban on letting pilots fly while on antidepressants, citing improvements in the drugs and an unforeseen side effect of the restriction: Depressed pilots flew but just kept their conditions secret.
“Our concern is that they haven’t necessarily been candid,” FAA administrator Randy Babbitt told reporters in a conference call.
The change in policy, which includes a degree of amnesty for pilots who lied about their diagnosis and treatment on medical certification forms, is aimed in part at clueing the government in on how many pilots suffer from a disease whose symptoms can include thoughts of suicide, Federal Aviation Administration officials said.
The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that about 9.5 percent of people 18 and older suffer from a mood disorder. A 2009 study by Columbia University showed that as many as 10 percent of Americans were taking antidepressants. FAA officials assume the percentage is about the same among pilots.
Under the ban, airline and other pilots who suspected they were depressed but wanted or financially needed to fly generally faced a choice: Seek no medication for treatment, because doing so would disqualify them, or self-medicate and lie about it on a required medical certification form — a federal crime. Neither, Babbitt said, is acceptable.
Under the new policy, pilots who take one of four antidepressants — Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa or Lexapro — or their generic equivalents will be allowed to fly if they have been successfully treated by those medications for a year without side effects that could pose a safety hazard in the cockpit.
The ban had endured because earlier generations of antidepressants caused concerns about side effects, such as drowsiness and seizures, Babbitt said.
