I appreciate the original posting as I had not heard of this news story. The comments following have been terrible.
mental illness in aviation, especially in airline flying is a real problem.
I agree. It is the proverbial Catch 22 situation where you wouldn't be normal if at times the stress of the job and lifestyle, including mergers, pay cuts, divorce, jetlag, WX and BK, didn't get to you. However, if you seek help from a mental health professional in coping with your issues and the feds find out, you have the very real risk of being permanently grounded depending on the diagnosis.
I've also had a couple of pilot friends commit suicide over the years, I would guess that the rate is lower than the general population due to employment screening and drug testing but that's just a hunch.
Increasingly bizarre behaviour will at some point get you sent for a psych evaluation. A couple of the more sensational examples in years past were Captain WOW at Delta and Captain Barney at FedEx. In both of these cases there was a layer of union politics mixed in but neither pilot returned to the cockpit from what I remember.