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Kevin Humphreys is a veteran of a number of overseas military deployments on Blackhawk and Chinook, currently a check and training pilot on AW139 helicopters and an ambassador for a number of mental health charities. He joins us in the interview today to share some of his flying experiences and his personal story of struggling with and overcoming an episode of mental illness.
With almost half of Australian adults estimated to experience a mental disorder at some time in their life it would be ludicrous to suggest that it is not something that would impact on the helicopter aircrew population.
This is part one of a two part interview. I’ll update this blog post with a link to the second half once it is published. Part 1/this episode is more focused on Kevin’s career and deployments which establishes the context for much of the mental health discussion in part 2.
Kevin graduated from the Australian Army’s officer training course at Duntroon in Canberra before being posted to Point Cook, Victoria for initial flying training. He flew with the Australian Army throughout the 90s and 2000s, flying Blackhawk and Chinook types and serving up until 2011.
Video Extract “From the Shadows: Australia’s Special Forces” where Kevin talks about flying in Afghanistan.
He discusses a number of deployments to East Timor, one to Iraq and then a number to Afghanistan with some of the lessons learnt from each along with some of the organisational and operational challenges at the time. Kevin also re-tells the events around OP NILE which was a multi-national, joint operation involving Australian Chinooks, Canadian special forces, Afghan forces, Dutch Apaches, a US AC-130 and predator UAVs.
They said a rocket propelled grenade passed under us and another RPG went over the top while we were on approach
We don’t spend a lot of time talking about Kevin’s post military flying career in rescue and the medical transport roles but he has held job titles along the way of – check and training captain, director of operations and chief pilot roles. Additional aircraft types are BK117, Bell 412 and AW139.
Outside of flying and on the mental health side of things Kevin is a speaker for BeyondBlue and a community ambassador for both the Mates4Mates program and the RUOK charity.
Kevin suffered from anxiety for many years, PTSD, turned to alcohol abuse and eventually reached a point of mental breakdown where he finally was given support. From here he started the long process of recovery and return to work. He is very open about his experiences and displays an incredible vulnerability and courage to talk about it in the second part of this interview (Episode 71) with the aim of helping anyone else that might be in the position he was and to help normalise the conversation.
One of Kevin’s messages is that mental health is a spectrum – no different from physical fitness – that there are times when we are very mentally fit and other times when we are mentally out of condition and need some more mental ‘pushups/exercise’ to get back into condition. The sooner the intervention and positive addressing of any issues the quicker the rebound is.
It is by no means a career ending event for aircrew and if we are trying to be professional aviators then it’s a topic that needs to be more widely discussed.
A number of links are provided below to mental health resources for anyone looking to take advantage of them.
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Links from this week’s episode:
Support the podcast on Patreon
MILITARY Mental Health Support
Mates4Mates
Stand Tall 4 PTS
Gallipoli Medical Research Foundation
Redsix APP – Phone App for veterans that alerts when other veterans are nearby and you/they need help
GENERAL COMMUNITY Mental Health Support
Phoenix Australia – Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health
R U OK? – suicide prevention charity that aims to start life-changing conversations
Moodgym – online self-help program designed to help prevent and manage symptoms of depression and anxiety. Free for Australians.
Beyond Blue – information and support to help everyone achieve their best possible mental health
Be a Looper APP – App that keeps you in contact with up to 5 people for regular check-ins, peer support that is unique to you
AVIATION SPECIFIC Mental Health Support
CASA Fact Sheet on Depression and Aviation Safety
Australian Federation of Air Pilots – Welfare Services
CH-47 Chinook dust landing examples in Afghanistan
Have a comment or feedback about Episode 70? A question for Kevin or a good resource to add to the list? Be part of the conversation by leaving a comment below.