This is Scientific American's 60 Second Science.

I'm Christopher in Tagyatta.

In March 2015, the co-pilot of German Wing's flight 9525

crashed the jet into the French Alps, killing himself and 149 others.

Later on, investigators found out he'd googled poisons and living wills, and he'd previously been treated for severe depression and yet his mental illness was

mostly ignored by Lufthansa, the airline's parent company.

After the crash, researchers with the Harvard School of Public Health reached out to commercial pilots worldwide,

advertising an anonymous survey about pilot health.

Among other topics, it had a short section on mental health.

Investigators found that nearly 13... it had a short section on mental health.

Investigators found that nearly 13% of the 1800 pilots surveyed

met the standard criteria for depression,

and 75 of them had had suicidal thoughts within the last few weeks.

The studies in the journal Environmental Health.

Couple caveats here.

The researchers didn't clinically diagnose the pilots,

and they can't compare rates of suicidal

thoughts and pilots to the rates you'd find among the general population.

That's due to sampling issues. Still, you're probably wondering, should you be

worried?

So the answer is no.

Alexander Wu, a doctoral candidate in occupational epidemiology.

...