If you’ve been following my work in diving psychology, you’ll know one of the topics of interest is panic and anxiety in scuba diving. You may also have noticed that the handful of surveys I tend to quote are rather old! That’s not because I do not look, it’s because there just is not a lot of research on this issue. Something to also note: the previous surveys are focused on recreational diving. I’ve not come across any that explore panic or near-panic in technical diving contexts. Given that these divers are considerably experienced and that the consequences are severe, then perhaps there is an assumption that it’s just not an issue? I don’t know about that, there just isn’t the data. (Though, anecdotally, I do have technical and advanced divers approach me about near-panic and related issues on cave or deco dives.)

Could you help?

Whatever sort of diving you do, you can help by taking the new survey on diver panic: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/DontPanic . This is being conducted by Scubanomics and In Depth magazine, and is anonymous. We are hoping to gain some new insights into divers experience of panic and near-panic in scuba diving. Please take the survey and share it widely to both recreational and technical divers, including instructors.

Want an In Depth read about diver panic?

Take a look at my most recent article about diver panic, it really does get into the depths to bring up aspects that you probably haven’t considered before: https://gue.com/blog/dont-panic-but-dont-avoid-it-that-will-make-things-worse/