klintE,
The approach of excluding anyone who has clinical depression is a slippery slope! Do you exclude everyone who had clinical depression in the past and has recovered according to all the available evidence?
You say pilots should be checked every year, what do you think will happen if you start checking pilots every year with the threat of dismissal if they are found to be depressed? I suspect you will end up driving this condition further underground or triggering MORE of these episodes.
The problem with some mental illnesses is that they can be very hard to pick up and diagnose especially if the individual concerned wants to hide the fact. The only way to tackle this is to have a very open and honest culture around mental problems. Airlines need to be very clear that it is a disease like any other and that time and resources will be put into you rehabilitation just like any other and only when all avenues of recovery are exhausted you may lose you medical certificate but be eligible for normal loss of licence provisions.
The problem we have at the moment is alot of airlines especially low cost ones don't provide ANY loss of licence or income insurance. Also most loss of licence policies will NOT pay out on mental disorders so the whole think encourages pilots to just keep quiet.
I have worked for an airline that provided flight crew with sick leave of 5 days per year, actively docked your pay if you had any more than this, required a doctors certificate at your own expense for EVERY single sick day and had NO loss of licence insurance available to the crew as it was our problem to sort out. Net result of those policies was that I was flying regularly with crew who were in no way or shape fit to fly. Airlines have to take ownership of this problem aswell, cheap no cost solutions like the CC in the flight deck may look good for public perception buy the crews physical and mental health which can cause these events needs actual time and resources to be committed.