ABSTRACT
Modifiable pathological conditions that may be related to mishap human factors including medical conditions, physiologic events related to flight as hypoxia, and more commonly, mental disorders. Thus, improved identification of even relatively mild mental disorders such as depression in aviators may be "low hanging fruit" in aviation safety in that they are highly prevalent and do affect cognitive domains related to usual human factors in mishaps. Some mental disorders, such as major depression, are also associated with cognitive impairment in a fashion similar to that resulting from moderate head injury. Mild dysphoria to full-blown major depression result in alterations of cognition directly related to human factors commonly associated with aviation mishaps. From a neuropsychiatric viewpoint, mishap errors and violations may reflect levels of cognitive impairment in areas of attention, memory and executive functions such as initiation, planning, execution and anticipation.
