Professional airline Pilots' Stress, Sleep Problems, Fatigue and Mental Health in Terms of Depression, Anxiety, Common Mental Disorders, and Wellbeing in Times of Economic Pressure and Covid19

The aim of this dissertation was to examine two so far separately considered complex constructs, fatigue and mental health, concerning a target group that has to cope with high stress, extraordinary workload, high risks and responsibility: professional pilots. The complexity of the psychophysiological construct fatigue should be highlighted. Potential correlations and interactions of stress with fatigue, sleep problems, mental health and well-being should be investigated. It seemed necessary to consider pilot fatigue not only in the context of sleep medicine, but also in context with the Theory of Allostasis, clinical, work psychology and burnout research. Studies one and two investigated, if our com-prehensive dataset of 406 pilots would support the Theory of Allostasis. Complex anal-yses confirmed that acute and chronic work-related and psychosocial stress were signifi-cantly associated with more psychophysiological wear and tear processes like high fa-tigue, sleep problems, impaired well-being and more symptoms of depression, anxiety, and CMD. The third study was a Qualitative Content Analysis of pilots' experiences, which perfectly confirmed the quantitative results of all five studies and the Theory of Allostasis. Studies 4, 5 and 6 compared groups of pilots. Australian pilots were slightly more affected than EASA-based pilots. Short-haul pilots of low-cost-carriers were most affected, reporting excessive fatigue, the most sleep problems, the most symptoms of depression, anxiety and CMD, and the most impaired well-being. These first six explora-tory studies have not received any funding but have identified important new research topics. These complex, new results should be the basis of future research regarding pi-lots' fatigue, health and flight safety in general.