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Comment by solenoid0937 | Hacker News Reader

There's a perfect example of "highly regulated and controlled industries" in which people no longer self-report: aviation.

Pilots do not (or no longer) self-report mental illness at the same frequency because it effectively destroys their lives and career. One paper of many describing this phenomenon: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11302551/

An article, one of many: https://www.reuters.com/investigations/if-you-arent-lying-yo...

If you have any pilot friends in commercial aviation, you can just talk to them as well.

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Airlines cannot try to put systems in place to deal with the issues? This isn't just about individuals but also organisations. You have to believe that organisations would also want to hide things even if mandated and incentivised otherwise.

Airlines sometimes try, but the regulations are federal, and the liability for the airlines of having a "pilot with reported mental health issues" is huge as well (because ultimately it's their business on the line if things go south).

So getting pilots to self report has been very unsuccessful because of how badly it ends for them.

A couple of days ago the senate had to pass a bill to make mental health medication access easier for pilots. We will see if it helps, but it doesn't solve the root cause (punitive measures) so I doubt it'll move the needle.

Not sure this is a good analogue as this isn't a situation of running experiments as a company, no?

The same incentives apply around self reporting.

Not so sure about the dynamics when it is a group of people with individual and collective reporting obligations and knowledge isn't just with one individual.

Collective reporting obligations are so easy to just break though. At many companies the process for such obligations is intentionally broken.

I do agree with you that a proper regulatory framework with clearly defined obligations is better than one off overly-punitive fines and arrests.

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