While FAA Federal Air Surgeon Susan Northrup admits in and FAA publication in June 2022 that ADHD is over diagnosed and that most people who were tagged in Elementary School last century were either misdiagnosed or if the diagnosis was correct, have outgrown it as an adult as the current science is putting this "under review," https://www.faa.gov/other_visit/aviation_industry/designees_delegations/designee_types/ame/fasmb/media/2022_Volume_57-1.pdf
mirrored https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NUKekBda0ds64QhfdIq0l9r2CRQX1JZ2/view
Only a week before on May 27, 2022 that Dr. Northup stated in an FAA podcast that she thinks that most people tagged with an ADHD diagnosis will spontaneously loose concentration in the cockpit https://www.faa.gov/podcasts/the_air_up_there/?file=2022-05-27-004.mp3&permalink updated link https://www.faa.gov/podcasts/the-air-up-there/mental-health Dr. Northrup's comments came off similar to labeling inner city minority youths in the 1980s-2000s as "super predators" claiming they are pre-disposed to a life of crime, a stance that now has been discredited and disowned. The FAA's stance on those tagged involuntary with ADHD as youths is similar to the racist profiling of the 20th century. Especially with the FAA's multiple posts in 2022 targeting pilots and air traffic controllers tagged with ADHD against their will. Their post of "learn to cope" comes off as self serving for example https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/vuetd2/learn_to_cope_thanks_faa/
That was only the latest of a series tone death social media posts put out by the FAA attacking people tagged with ADHD and The reason for Northrup's defensive response. This recent tone-death and discriminatory campaign of the FAA Medical Division AAM-300 has enacted since the start of the COVID Pandemic of singling out pilots and air traffic controllers that ever were tagged with ADHD, forcing them to go through the "Gary Kay Special" of tests that are rigged to fail the test taker and thus losing their FAA Medicals harkens back to the type of discrimination and segregation during the Jim Crow Era. What's even more disturbing is the fact The FAA ramped up this attack via social media only recently in early 2022.
Two FAA psychologists published an article in Jan 2022 on of all platforms Medium.
https://medium.com/faa/pilots-with-attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder-adhd-6518967ac46e
which was met by massive outrage as shown in this reddit thread From Jan 18 2022. https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/sednwy/can_we_address_the_faas_latest_publication_on_adhd/
The Article itself is poorly written, fails to cite any sources to back up any of its fallacious accusations such as the claim ADHD pilots fail to perform preflight and safety considerations, First thing to point out, any pilot that wreckless would fail to get through flight school because no CFI would sign off on that type of unsafe behavior for a checkride which a DPE would fail the unsafe pilot before the plane left the ground 100% of the time. This as well as other outlandish claims The authors' state in this article are nothing more than statements of fiction. One redditor posted They kinda just throw a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what sticks, probably because they're starting to catch a lot of flack for out of date policies
It should also be noted that either the authors failed to perform a 5 minute google search of the actual accident statistics during a 15 year period from 2000-2015 that showed an accident rate of 0.18% or in other words, statistically not likely to happen and pilots with ADHD are statically safer. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28818147/ or they are intentionally ignoring that data because it goes against their version of "The Science™"?
We pointed out those statics here,
Where are the hard facts to back up the authors claims especially since they don't want the FAA to issue medicals to pilots that were tagged with ADHD? In fact the article fails to bring up any statistics outside the claim 70% of aviation accidents are caused by any pilot error. But if they claim if you have ADHD and you can't get a medical, how do they know pilots with ADHD are unsafe? where is their proof? If anything the NTSB data that was not factored into The FAA's article not only shows that if you have ADHD you are 99.82% unlikely to cause an accident, The rate is the essentially the same for those that have formal tagging with ADHD 0.08% and those that didn't that didn't 0.10% One can assume a sizeable percentage if not the majority of pilots flying have ADHD which is either undiagnosed or is intentionally withheld from the FAA, who never have an accident.
To put this into perspective, astronaut Scott Kelly admits that if he were younger he would have been diagnosed with ADHD and would have been disqualified as an astronaut with the formal diagnosis even though it didn't negatively affect him as an astronaut, in fact it probably made him and his twin brother Sen. Mark Kelly better astronauts through hyper focusing. Curious to Sen. Mark Kelly's opinion on the cognitive profiling by the FAA and if he's going to support legislation against it in the Senate?
https://www.understood.org/articles/en/astronaut-scott-kelly-opens-up-about-his-attention-issues
The FAA article came completely across as tone deaf, ignorant of the facts, and completely self-serving. If anything this article comes across as truthful as the racist claims that inner-city youths are predispositioned to become "superpredators" which was pushed in congress in the 1990s but now has been discredited and disavowed. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/they-were-sentenced-as-superpredators-who-were-they-really/ and https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/561063-black-and-brown-children-are-not-superpredators-and-should-not-spend and https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/07/politics/biden-1993-speech-predators/index.html
What prompted the FAA to have this article published? Perhaps the backlash of stigmatizing anyone tagged with ADHD as a child and/or the general push for Aeromedical Reform?
Same question could be said for this social media post from January 28, 2022, the FAA posted this on their Instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/CZSAkWFORq_/ Once again ripped this completely apart calling it an outright lie, self serving, and out of tough with reality, especially with the 24 month process of even hearing back from the FAA being all too common. Several posts calling for the ouster of FAA Administrator Steve Dickson, the very same Steve Dickson who oversaw the weaponized fraudulent bio-polar diagnosis against Delta Airlines Pilot Karlene Petitt for being a federal whistleblower, then had the scrubbed from his Wikipedia which we pointed out here. https://sites.google.com/site/no2cog/supporting-evidence/psychology-confirmation-bias-and-social-equity-quotas
There FAA then doubled down on their Instagram profile by publishing this post on February 13, 2022 singling out people tagged with ADHD.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CZ7GUi8uRfu/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
There were several calls for aeromedical reform and one comment in particular caught my eye
i waited 12 MONTHS for my 3rd class and got a SODA and now i’m waiting another 12 MONTHS and counting to get my first, your process is the worst in the world, what a disgrace! how can you post about something like this knowing all the problems with your terrible process?!? my terrible issues don’t even scratch the surface with your awful system. the process of getting a medical is quite literally institutionalized ableism.
Didn’t realize ADHD would put me though a painful testing and rehabilitation process when I was just about ready for a check ride.🤣 Like Fr if you have ADHD or have taken meds for it choose a different career.
particularly with the response
@willthompson26 Dr Leon Eisenberg, who made up ADHD, made a ‘deathbed confession’ that ‘ADHD is a prime example of a fictitious disease.’
You have been victim of a drug selling scam and now the FAA is involved as well; I feel for you buddy!
A google search of Dr. Leon Eisenberg, confirms his statement about fabricating ADHD as a disease is true. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/work-of-fiction/ mirrored https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t3YpXvxlEqIcOMOaswK7T2yhHif1OC9p/view
specifically calling ADHD a fictitious disease being pushed to drum up Ritalin sales https://www.ccdu.org/sites/default/files/media/docs/LeonEisenberg.pdf Case in point, ads on facebook for 1 hour ADHD diagnosis and these quacks that are pushing "The Science™" of mental heath are making hand over fist on this without any real inquiries as to why.
https://www.facebook.com/doneadhd/posts/415483879896206
Honestly if a professional pilot was caught doing lines of cocaine in the flight deck would they end up going through as much grief as being tagged with ADHD?
Here's the rub, up until what 2020-22 ADHD was never even specifically stated as a disqualifier specifically as one of the 15 disqualifiers.
Even the FAA's own website still doesn't list it as a disqualifier
https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/avs/offices/aam/ame/guide/standards/
Unless otherwise directed by the FAA, the Examiner must deny or defer if the applicant has a history of: (1) Diabetes mellitus requiring hypoglycemic medication; (2) Angina pectoris; (3) Coronary heart disease that has been treated or, if untreated, that has been symptomatic or clinically significant; (4) Myocardial infarction; (5) Cardiac valve replacement; (6) Permanent cardiac pacemaker; (7) Heart replacement; (8) Psychosis; (9) Bipolar disorder; (10) Personality disorder that is severe enough to have repeatedly manifested itself by overt acts; (11) Substance dependence; (12) Substance abuse; (13) Epilepsy; (14) Disturbance of consciousness and without satisfactory explanation of cause, and (15) Transient loss of control of nervous system function(s) without satisfactory explanation of cause.
On the Mental subset it lists
No diagnosis of psychosis, or bipolar disorder, or severe personality disorders
Also substance abuse reporting according to their own written guidelines is NOT lifetime only is stated only goes back for 2 years, yet they move the goalposts if you took a few hits of weed in college decades ago, If that's the case then Sen. Cruz, The Sec of Transportation in 2022, Pete Buttigieg and The Vice President in 2022 Kamala Harris would also be considered substance abusers. But you were forced to take Ritalin by the public schools when you were 8, BANNED.
Nor was it listed at all on the paper form 8500 before the MedXpress website existed only a few years ago https://www.aviationmedicine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/FAA-Form-8500-8-GG-Edition-APPLICATION-FOR-AIRMAN-MEDICAL-CERTIFICATE.pdf it just said bi-polar, depression, anxiety, ect.
mirrored https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YDn3oyLxJeycnadoEIqrlNBADnIjphlN/view
It has been documented that the FAA is less than transparent with what is considered disqualifiers, with the Federal Air Surgeon picking and choosing which issues that pilots have to go through red tape hell. This isn't exactly legal either. https://aam300.com/faq/
Go back to the comments section on Instagram and read some of them, here are some of the highlights
This is exactly why pilots either don’t get diagnosed or are diagnosed and treated under an assumed name. Stop being fn clowns.
Stop posting until you actually fix things
oquette_aero😂😂😂
I know a few undiagnosed ADD and ADHD pilots that perform quite well. Not sure I know anyone born since the 80s’ that doesn’t have a lil hyper attention deficit disorder… 🤘🏼if this is true, with new generation? There won’t be any pilots. They live life watching 10 TikTok videos… they’re conditioning the deficit attention span.
People with ADHD are perfectly capable of flying airplanes
People with the unique ability to efficiently multi-task and focus on several different pieces of information at a time shouldn’t be pilots? Sounds about right to me. 🙄 there are tons of undiagnosed and untreated pilots flying private, commercial, and military. We know enough about the physiology of ADHD to get rid of this BS.
FAA again, your PR/social media person is not very educated
Y’all have no fucking clue how many pilots are out there with adhd or ocd or any other fucking thing that just aren’t even diagnosed… they’re all probably flying just fine too. Honestly this shits insane 😂
That’s neuropsych crap is nothing but a money grab and an exploitation.
One of my friends was offered a 6000 dollar "cognitive training course" after he was told he had ADHD by one of the aeromed specialists that he was differed to after they saw meds on his medical forms. Your programs are nothing but cash grabs simply because the FAA as an entity is nothing but a bunch of tyrants.
It’s almost like you’re purposefully trolling the pilot community this week. What the hell @faa . This is your biggest problem institutionally and you are literally advertising it. Insane.
Screw this reg. My best friend has been fighting your stupid process for the last five years because he was diagnosed as a kid. He no longer deals with the effects of ADHD, but apparently that doesn’t matter to you. He’s had nothing but setbacks and AME’s exploiting him for money. Y’all need to fix your system. You’re holding back people who will perform just as well as everyone else for something that they have been diagnosed with as a child and no longer suffer from. Absolutely RIDICULOUS.
This process for ADHD I wouldn’t recommend to my worst enemy. It’s not technically disqualifying, you just gotta prove to them on this super hard cognitive test that u can perform on the same level as average pilots.