Women’s Health UK – September 2019

116 | SEPTEMBER 2019 Women’s Health

losing the door of my hotel room behind

me, I let my bags fall to the floor. I collapsed

on the bed with my uniform jacket still

buttoned, cabin shoes still on, ID lanyard

around my neck. As I ripped off my Velcro

scarf, my mouth formed a silent wail. The

tears streamed down my face until my

eyes were strained and puffy. I’d managed

to paste a smile on my face for the past

16 hours as I served coffee and paced the

cabin, checking on passengers thousands

of feet above Central Asia, but, having

finally reached the solace of my Singapore

hotel room, I fell into turbulent free fall.

I barricaded the balcony door, 20 floors

high, overlooking the pool, fearful I might

open it sleepwalking if I did manage to

ever nod off. I was so low, I was scared of

what I might unconsciously do. Fatigue

enveloping my very bones, I had hit a wall.

Six months later, I worked my last flight,

and it took me a year to claw my life back.

It’s not an uncommon story among those

who fly for a living. Studies on mental health

and suicide have been carried out on pilots,

with a 2018 systematic review identifying

commercial airline pilots to be at similar or

potentially increased risk of experiencing

depression as the general population,

though research into the occurrence of

mental health issues in cabin crew is scarce.

Within the community, there’s a rumoured

statistic that one cabin crew member takes

their own life every month. The latest

figures from the Office for National

Statistics reveal that four flight attendants

in England and Wales alone took their own

lives in 2017, but don’t account for Scottish,

Northern Irish and European crew who

commute from their home towns to work

for UK-based carriers, let alone the

hundreds of thousands of crew around the

world. Indeed, a US survey of over 11,000

American airline crew by The National

Institute for Occupational Safety and

Health (NIOSH) in September 2012, found

that deaths of flight attendants from suicide

were found to be one and a half

times higher than those among

the general population. In

March 2018, a survey of over

5,000 female flight attendants

who participated in the Harvard

Flight Attendant Health Study

reported increased prevalence

of adverse sleep and mental

health outcomes, as well as

associations between tenure

and anxiety, depression, sleep

disorders and alcohol abuse.

Sick and tired

For a career that exudes

glamour – from the preened

hair and perfectly made-up

face to the exotic destinations

• the reality is far from it. Sleep
  deprivation is an obvious risk
  factor – and a very real one.
  Over months and years, cabin
  crew are plagued by disrupted
  sleep patterns, constantly
  acclimatising to new time
  zones and working long and
  unsociable hours, with little
  opportunity to establish any
  semblance of sleep-hygiene
  rituals or spend a prolonged
  period sleeping in their own
  bed. ‘There are three types of
  sleep deprivation,’ explains Dr
  Carina Eriksen, a former cabin
  crew member who is now a
  registered aviation psychologist
  and advises airlines on pilot
  mental health, cabin crew
  relationships and implementing
  peer-support programmes.
  ‘One is the disruption of your
  circadian rhythm, where your
  body clock becomes out of sync
  because you’re at work through
  the night. Acute is where you
  go consecutive days (say, three)
  without accumulating any
  sleep. The third is cumulative
  sleep deprivation: building
  over time – symptoms include
  reduced performance, cognitive
  impairment, emotional
  processing issues, low levels of
  motivation and lack of energy


• and setting in gradually.’ Even
  short-haul crew members
  can be beholden to 4am starts
  and 11pm home times.
  The past few years have seen
  a swathe of research linking

prolonged interruption of the sleep-wake cycle to the

development of mood disorders like depression. ‘In

the short term, you’ll have a shorter attention span, be

more prone to making mistakes and experience less

emotional control,’ explains Dr Aarti Jagannath, an

associate professor in the medical sciences division

at the University of Oxford. ‘In the longer term, a

disrupted circadian rhythm precipitates a number of

disorders, depression being one, anxiety another. We

also know that crossing time zones can increase risk of

manic episodes in individuals who are prone to them.’

It’s the reason cabin crew working hours are strictly

Anxiety

Attent

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