Symbiotics gives mental wellbeing assessments to pilots

To help support Mental Health Awareness Week taking place 13th– 19th May 2019, Symbiotics is offering mental wellbeing assessmentsto pilots, with the hope that this will help to further the conversation aroundmental health in this marketplace and help individuals to identify if they maybe struggling with a mental health issue.

Symbiotics will provide MHS’ MindQ, a clinically validatedmental wellbeing risk assessment for free of charge during mental health week,up to a maximum of 250 licenses. MindQ is a short online assessment that takes10-15 minutes to complete and helps to identify those at risk of mentalill-health. The assessment covers a range of issues that can impact an individual’smental wellbeing including looking at emotional satisfaction (job, material, personal),anxiety, depression, stress coping, drugs and alcohol.

Symbiotics’ Chief Occupational Psychologist, Karen Moore,says: “With the EASA changes to mandate pilot psychological evaluations, we areseeing some airlines starting to put in place peer support programmes and lookingto raise awareness of mental health to normalize the conversation. A recentsurvey we undertook of pilots shows that there is still a significant way to goin the industry implementing solutions to identify those at risk of suffering frommental health conditions. We see the need to identify issues early as criticalto enable people to get the right help as soon as possible and keep people inwork. MindQ has been in use by Symbiotics for the last 6 months and we have so fardata from almost 500 pilots that show during the feedback sessions, MindQ to bean excellent indicator of an individual’s mental state.”

Mental Health still has a stigma attached to it, whichSymbiotics is helping to remove. By offering these assessments free of chargeincluding, where appropriate, a feedback telephone conversation with one of thecompany’s psychologists, it is hoped that pilots will start to talk about thesubject of mental health more openly. All conversations and assessment findingswill be treated in strict confidence, with no information being disclosed to athird party.

Karen Moore continues: “It would be great to giveaway more assessments, however, we have to be mindful of the number of individuals whose results may require a feedback session and therefore have had to limit it in order to ensure we can honour all the feedback sessions. Current research suggests as many as 1 in 4 pilots are currently experiencing mental health concerns.”

If you are a pilot and would like to take MindQ mental wellbeing risk assessment for free, visit the Symbiotics website here to get your licence code. This offer is only open to the first 250 pilots.