The Relationship between Sick Leave and Pilot's Depression & Anxiety Tendency Using BDI & STAI

Lee, Jun Yong; Lee, Yong Bo; Beck, Seong Ho; Jo, Jae Bum; Park, Noh Won; Lee, Won Keun; Lee, Je; Lim, Heon Kil; Kim, Jeong Hyun

Abstract

BACKGROUND
It is known that depression and anxiety tendency causes physical or social dysfunction. Nowadays, the air travel is increasing as the life condition has been improved so the health of pilots who are in charge of passengers become a very important issue. However, few studies have been done on this issue, especially the relationship between depression & anxiety and medical diseases among them. This study was performed to know the factors affection pilots' sick leave and the correlation between depression & anxiety and sick leave.
METHODS
Self administered questionaires were obtained from 123 pilots of one of the airline companies at Seoul from 1st April to 30th may 2003. Depression tendency was measured based upon BDI, the level of anxiety was measured by the standardised STAI and obesity was diagnosed if a BMI is over 25 kg/m2. The data on the subjects' age, position, airlines and the days of sick leave were obtained from personal record.
RESULTS
All the study subjects were male with the average age of 40.23+/-7.48 (ranging from 30 to 60). The average age for those who had sick leave was 34.58+/-3.50 and that for those who had not was 40.48+/-7.55 and these two average ages showed difference with statistical significance (P value <0.001), and the odd ratio of sick leave about age was 0.796 (95% CI: 0.645-0.938). Whether a pilot had sick leave or not, however, was not statistically related to the level of BDI, STAI, flying duty, flying route, and body mass index (P value >0.05).
CONCLUSION
This study shows that the average age of sick leave group was lower than that of non-sick leave group (P<0.001). The level of depression and anxiety were not related to the sick leave. The reasons for this seems to be the fact that pilots are healthier than general population and also they pay more attention to their own health. The younger pilots tended to have more days of sick leave, which might be explain that the older pilots were more cautious about the disadvantages of having sick leave but, the younger pilots tend to have strong individualistic personalities.