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Archives of Medicine
ISSN: 1989-5216
July 26-27, 2018
Rome, Italy
Ergonomics & Human factors 2018
Page 14
1 st Edition of International Conference on
Ergonomics &
Human Factors
On 24 March 2015, the Germanwings flight 9525, carrying
150 people on board, crashed in the foothills of the French
Alps. Safety investigation ascertained, based on CVR listening,
that the accident was due to the co-pilot’s suicidal intention.
Anti-depression medication was found in his home; furthermore,
there was evidence that he had undergone psychiatric treatment
in specialised centres. Two questions are relevant: how was it
possible for the co-pilot to keep pilot license despite a certified
psychopathological condition? Is it possible to predict the social
danger level of a person suffering from psychopathology?
Reading the current European Regulation (EASA part-MED), it
seems that the certification of psychopathological disease is
up to the individual initiative of the person suffering from it, or,
potentially, to the reporting by the colleagues, with all the critical
issues inherently associated. There are psychopathological
syndromes that could result invisible to poor structured
psychodiagnostic monitoring protocols. To predict a social
danger level of a person means to reconstruct his history and,
hence, find out what personal meanings s/he is prone to attribute
to her/his own experience and how this affects her/his wellbeing,
in order to understand why s/he has ended up in limiting her/
his range of possibilities to the extent that damaging her/himself
and other people is considered as the only way to manage
her/his discomfort. These topics are the object of a corpus
of guidelines, proposed by the author of this paper to safety-
critical organizations, for the mitigation of the hazards related
to the presence of psychopathological conditions in the aviation
frontline staff. The proposed approach brings about a change of
perspective, intended to hinder stigma and trivialization towards
psychopathological disease, as well as to deliver a message in
which the safety of aviation operations corresponds to the health
of professionals in charge of generating it.
Recent Publications
1. Tomasello P (2018), Psicopatologia del personale
aeronautico e sicurezza, PeriodicoANACNAAssistenza
al Volo, Anno XLIII, numero 1/2018
anacna/docs/aavv2018_01/14 (in italian)
2. TomaselloP(2015),Psychopatology:Anunderestimated
hazard for aviation safety? The Aviation & Space
Journal, XIV-2, p.14 .
com/wpcontent/uploads/2015/06/The-Aviation-
Space-Journal-Year-XIV-no-2-April-June-20151.pdf
3. Tomasello P (2013), A Tentative taxonomy of Aviation
Psychology The Aviation & Space Journal, XII-2, p.
Journal_APRILJUNE_2013_YEAR_XII_N_2.pdf
4. Contissa G., Lanzi P., Laukyte M., Marti P., Masutti A.,
Sartor G., Tomasello P., Schebesta A. (2013) Liability
and automation: issues and challenges for socio-
technical systems Journal of Aerospace Operations,
vol. 2, no. 1-2, pp. 79-98, 2013
com/articles/journal-of-aerospace-operations/033?res
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Psychopathology of aviation front-line staff
and safety: guidelines for the prevention of
adverse events
Paola Tomasello
Giustino Fortunato University, Italy
Paola Tomasello, Arch Med 2018, Volume 10
DOI: 10.21767/1989-5216-C1-001