Stress in the aviation industry can hugely affect one's life outside work. Millions of veterans struggle with post-traumatic stress injuries, unhealthy coping strategies such as alcohol or substance abuse and in the worst of cases, suicide, which is very common. Many studies and help programs have been put in place, but there are many different cases and people that it is impossible to help everyone. Stress overcomes even the strongest, most highly training pilots and can take the worst toll. Everyone deals with stress in a different manner, but military pilots stand out on their own with unique stress reducing and problem solving skills. Their
Epigenetics of anxiety and stress-related disorders triggered PTSD. "Nr3c1" is a gene that encodes a glucocorticoid receptor (GR) and contains many GR response elements. Early life stress increases methylation of the 1 promoter in this gene (or the 1 promoter analog in rodents). Because of its role in stress response and its link to early life stress, this gene has been of particular interest in the context of PTSD and has been studied in PTSD of both combat veterans and civilians. In studies involving combat veterans, those who developed PTSD had lowered methylation of the "Nr3c1" 1 promoter compared to those who did not develop PTSD.