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Obsessive compulsive disorder among pilots

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Obsessive compulsive disorder among pilots

Old 23rd Mar 2014, 00:30
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elvis

OCD lies on a spectrum. Where one falls on that spectrum is the issue wrt whether it becomes manageable or debilitating.
Safe aviating is built on SOP, routine, structure, diligence, thoroughness, preparedness to list but a few. OCD tendencies obviously could be beneficial during operations, however severe OCD I believe would be problematic.
As you mentioned in an earlier post, managing the compulsions is the key in aviation as in daily living. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can be helpful/successful for a true diagnosis.
Good luck.
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Old 23rd Mar 2014, 02:55
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ORIGIN OF THE CHECKLIST

In October 30, 1935, at Wright Air
Field in Dayton, Ohio, the U.S. Army
Air Corps held a flight competition for
aircraft manufacturers vying to build
its next-generation long-range bomber.
It wasn’t supposed to be much of a
competition. In early evaluations, the Boeing Corporation’s
gleaming aluminum-alloy Model 299 had trounced the
designs of Martin and Douglas. Boeing’s plane could carry five
times as many bombs as the Army had requested; it could
fly faster than previous bombers, and almost twice as far.

A Seattle newspaperman who had glimpsed the plane called
it the “flying fortress.” The name stuck. The flight
“competition,” according to the military historian Phillip
Meilinger, was regarded as a mere formality. The Army planned
to order at least sixty-five of the aircraft.
A small crowd of Army brass and manufacturing executives
watched as the Model 299 test plane taxied onto the runway. It
was sleek and impressive, with a hundred-and-three-foot wingspan
and four engines jutting out from the wings, rather than the usual
two. The plane roared down the tarmac, lifted off smoothly and
climbed sharply to three hundred feet. Then it stalled, turned on
one wing and crashed in a fiery explosion. Two of the five crew
members died, including the pilot, Major Ployer P. Hill (thus Hill
AFB , Ogden, UT ).

An investigation revealed that nothing mechanical had gone
wrong. The crash had been due to “pilot error,” the report said.
Substantially more complex than previous aircraft, the new plane
required the pilot to attend to the four engines, a retractable landing
gear, new wing flaps, electric trim tabs that needed adjustment
to maintain control at different airspeeds, and constant-speed
propellers whose pitch had to be regulated with hydraulic controls,
among other features.

While doing all this, Hill had forgotten to release a new locking
mechanism on the elevator and rudder controls. The Boeing
model was deemed, as a newspaper put it, “too much aircraft for
one man to fly.” The Army Air Corps declared Douglas’s smaller
design the winner. Boeing nearly went bankrupt.

Still, the Army purchased a few aircraft from Boeing as test planes,
and some insiders remained convinced that the aircraft was flyable.
So a group of test pilots got together and considered what to do.
They could have required Model 299 pilots to undergo more
training. But it was hard to imagine having more experience and
expertise than Major Hill, who had been the U.S. Army Air Corps’
Chief of Flight Testing. Instead, they came up with an ingeniously
simple approach: they created a pilot’s checklist, with step-by-step
checks for takeoff, flight, landing, and taxiing. Its mere existence
indicated how far aeronautics had advanced.

In the early years of flight, getting an aircraft into the air might
have been nerve-racking, but it was hardly complex. Using a
checklist for takeoff would no more have occurred to a pilot than
to a driver backing a car out of the garage... But this new plane was
too complicated to be left to the memory of any pilot, however
expert.

With the checklist in hand, the pilots went on to fly the Model
299 a total of 18 million miles without one accident. The Army
ultimately ordered almost thirteen thousand. They
dubbed it the B-17.

(From the Royal Victorian Aero Club's newsletter PLANE TALK Dec 2012)
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Old 23rd Mar 2014, 16:55
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Parts of this thread are starting to look like that "other" web site. Had enough of the sound of hob nail boots, goose stepping beneath the Arch d Triumph there, let's not do it here.
WD
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Old 3rd Apr 2014, 16:32
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Test Yourself!

Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS)

Seems I am a 12. That figures!
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Old 21st Apr 2014, 14:29
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CDO is the worst form of OCD where everything must be in alphabetical order
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Old 6th May 2014, 03:04
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That's just the old smell test. If you try to do a taste test on the flight plan it leaves goober all over it and is off-putting for the rest of the crew.

I have flown with a couple of real obsessive guys in my career. One would have circled his seat three times before sitting down had there been sufficient room. Getting him ready to push-back on schedule was the quite an effort. He didn't last, sad to say: he eventually got too paralysed with ritual to keep his job.
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Old 12th May 2014, 17:41
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I'll cautiously weigh in.

Based on my observations of fellow students back in the day, and those that I have instructed over the years, I would say that the risks of obsessive behaviour (not a great word but I can't seem to find better just now) are very real. I know of several who were unsuccessful as pilots for the simple reason that they could NOT let things go.

Yes, planning and checklists and routine are vital parts of preparing for and completing a flight safely. It is just as important to be able to prioritize. The aircraft will NOT stop while you recheck your plan 5 times, or do the checklist a few more times just to be sure.

As experience is gained and the flying gets more challenging it will become necessary to, at times, live with ambiguity. I hear the cries already! I didn't say accept ambiguity, just deal with it. Inevitably the aircraft will find a way to malfunction that isn't written down, or no matter how many times you ask the agency your talking to they just can't get you the weather. As pilot you must be able to keep functioning whether you are getting the things you want or not.

It is a fluid environment up there, and we must be able to adapt as well as plan.
"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." - Dwight D. Eisenhower
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