Articles

The people who ask me about this have good performance reviews and an apology ready. Work is the last part of a life to go, which makes it a poor place to look for evidence. Here is what high-functioning depression turns out to be on examination, and what changes treatment when someone is still holding everything up.

A gender dysphoria assessment done well takes about six months, not one to six appointments. A licensed psychologist explains what the time is for, what gets ruled out, how capacity to consent is weighed, and what the findings can and cannot settle.

Most of the guilt people bring me is noise. Then there is the other kind, where you let something slide that mattered and you know it. Forgiving yourself for that kind follows a sequence, and skipping to the end does not work. Here is the order I use.

People in their thirties and forties tell me they have a good life and nobody to tell about it. The friendships didn't fail. The structures that used to do most of the work of friendship quietly went away, and nothing replaced them. Here is what that costs and what rebuilding takes.

Pilots who freeze on a checkride are rarely the ones who skipped the studying. They are usually the ones whose flying had become automatic and then got interrupted by the sound of their own supervision. Here is what the research shows, what the ACS counts as a bust, and what the work to fix it looks like.

Yes, controllers can go to therapy, and the FAA's May 2026 guidance names you specifically. The medical standard is the same one pilots hold. The reporting rules are not, and the differences matter. An aviation psychologist explains.

Burnout and ADHD produce almost the same complaint: you can't focus, you can't start things, you lose the thread in meetings. The difference is in the timeline, and a careful evaluation is built to find it. A licensed psychologist explains what separates the two, why online screeners can't, and what changes depending on the answer.

A childhood ADHD diagnosis or an old prescription doesn't end a flying career before it starts. The FAA sorts ADHD histories into a Fast Track and a Standard Track, and the difference between them is one interview versus days of testing. An aviation psychologist explains who qualifies for each, and why the order you do things in matters most.

A DUI, a positive test, or an honest answer on Item 18 can put a pilot in the FAA's HIMS program. It's not the end of a career. An FAA/HIMS trained aviation psychologist explains the evaluation, treatment, monitoring, and special issuance steps, and what a substance abuse evaluation actually looks at.