STAYING SANE IN OUTER SPACE
By David Gallagher
NASA system will help train astronauts to identify psychosocial problems on long-duration space flights
Originally published in Psychology Today, December 2002
Undoubtedly, the business of being an astronaut is tough work. A 2001 NASA report, Safe Passage, Astronaut Care for Exploration Missions, cites difficulties in behavioral and cultural understandings as a major health risk for astronauts on long-duration missions, such as a mission to Mars. The study states that astronaut interactions in the harsh, isolated environment of space “may well be one of the more serious challenges to exploratory missions by human.”
This has been known to NASA doctors for some time. In addition to bone loss, radiation dangers, and other key survival elements, human behavior has been identified on NASA’s Critical Path Roadmap (CPR) as a potential risk factor to long-duration space flight. The CPR was developed in 1998 to prepare NASA for future long-duration missions.
The Smart Medical System for Psychosocial Support (SMS-PS) currently under development by the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) will help to make long-duration missions possible by preventing, assessing, and managing social and psychological problems. The system will focus on mild depression and conflict resolution.
The research team is led by Dr. James Carter, Researcher at Dartmouth Medical School, and Jay Buckey, MD, Researcher and Associate Professor at Dartmouth Medical School and astronaut on the 1998 Neurolab Mission.
“The stresses of long-duration space flight, such as separation from family, loss of privacy and limited social outlets can lead to mood disturbances, loss of sleep, conflict, work problems and, potentially, depression,” said Dr. Carter. “Our goal is to train people to maintain a positive work environment.”
“Most astronauts are healthy people who are put into very challenging conditions,” said Buckey. “These are high-functioning people who still find it a challenge.”
The SMS-PS will combine video, audio, text, and graphics to create a lifelike environment. Actors will play the roles of “virtual crew members” in prerecorded interactions, and astronauts would choose their responses to determine the outcome of these scenarios. During training and perhaps on missions, astronauts would use the system to learn how to identify and treat potential problems before they arise.
A prototype of the SMS-PS will be developed and evaluated by October 2003.
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© David Gallagher 2005.
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