Photo: NASA
It has been decided: man is going to space, and he’s going to make sure to colonize at least one planet (Mars) while there. Various governments and companies are working toward expansive space exploration, but the human cost of these missions must not be ignored, overlooked, or underestimated.
We already know that space missions impact the astronauts involved in a myriad of ways. From the physical challenges (loss of bone density, changes in the muscular system or the heart) to the mental ones, these side-effects of spending extended periods in space have been studied before. A new study takes the spotlight and shines it brightly on the impact on mental health.
The conclusion is not exactly a cheering one.
With humanity getting ready to send the first manned mission to Mars and, sometime in the near future (hopefully), to colonize the Red Planet, it’s about time the human costs of space exploration were considered. The first colonizers will be up for the biggest challenge ever, in the most literal sense. If the journey to Mars or landing on the planet doesn’t kill them, if they survive the waves of radiation and the hostile environment, they still have a huge hurdle ahead: themselves.
Lack of gravity, lack of privacy, lack of a regular day-cycle, the inescapable routine of everyday life, living in a confined but crowded space, the cold, and the hostile environment. All these will play a role in ultimately altering the mental health of the astronauts, with potentially disastrous consequences for one or more members of the team.
In order to predict the kind of psychological toll space exploration will have on astronauts, a team of researchers conducted a 9-month study on personnel at research centers in Antarctica: two of them, to be more precise, one situated inland and a coastal one. Though they’re still on Earth, these researchers experience similar conditions as astronauts, minus the lack of gravity.
The conclusion was that longer missions inevitably lead to a decline in positive emotions. Not only that, but participants in the study expressed less interest in self-regulating these negative emotions as time went by and manifested physical ailments. Put simply, without a protocol in place for these situations, they can only go from bad to worse.
The study was led by psychologist Candice Alfano, director of the University of Houston’s Sleep and Anxiety Center, and her team, who developed a self-reporting diagnostic called Mental Health Checklist (MHCL). It allowed to track participants’ mental well-being, monitor their level of stress hormones, and provide a presumably accurate description of what will happen on space missions.
During the study, participants expressed decreased levels of feel-good emotions, such as awe, satisfaction, and inspiration, essential for surviving in high-stress scenarios. At points, they showed clear symptoms of depression and anxiety, heightened by and directly related to increasing complaints about their physical health.
Perhaps even worse, even as they approached the date for the return home, they failed to show any improvement—or what is known as “the third-quarter effect.” At the same time, the longer the mission, the fewer the attempts to regulate negative emotions and enforce positive ones.
That sounds very bleak for today’s researchers at Antarctica and tomorrow’s astronauts on Mars. The upside is that this can and should be countered with effective measures that will mitigate some of these potentially devastating effects.
“Interventions and counter measures aimed at enhancing positive emotions may, therefore, be critical in reducing psychological risk in extreme settings,” Alfano writes in the study.
Sure, on the face of it, we’re all “tough it out, you can do it,” and there’s still plenty of stigma surrounding mental health in many aspects of our life. But with space exploration, if not with anything else, that’s not the kind of risk you want to take.
The conclusion is not exactly a cheering one.
With humanity getting ready to send the first manned mission to Mars and, sometime in the near future (hopefully), to colonize the Red Planet, it’s about time the human costs of space exploration were considered. The first colonizers will be up for the biggest challenge ever, in the most literal sense. If the journey to Mars or landing on the planet doesn’t kill them, if they survive the waves of radiation and the hostile environment, they still have a huge hurdle ahead: themselves.
Lack of gravity, lack of privacy, lack of a regular day-cycle, the inescapable routine of everyday life, living in a confined but crowded space, the cold, and the hostile environment. All these will play a role in ultimately altering the mental health of the astronauts, with potentially disastrous consequences for one or more members of the team.
In order to predict the kind of psychological toll space exploration will have on astronauts, a team of researchers conducted a 9-month study on personnel at research centers in Antarctica: two of them, to be more precise, one situated inland and a coastal one. Though they’re still on Earth, these researchers experience similar conditions as astronauts, minus the lack of gravity.
The conclusion was that longer missions inevitably lead to a decline in positive emotions. Not only that, but participants in the study expressed less interest in self-regulating these negative emotions as time went by and manifested physical ailments. Put simply, without a protocol in place for these situations, they can only go from bad to worse.
The study was led by psychologist Candice Alfano, director of the University of Houston’s Sleep and Anxiety Center, and her team, who developed a self-reporting diagnostic called Mental Health Checklist (MHCL). It allowed to track participants’ mental well-being, monitor their level of stress hormones, and provide a presumably accurate description of what will happen on space missions.
During the study, participants expressed decreased levels of feel-good emotions, such as awe, satisfaction, and inspiration, essential for surviving in high-stress scenarios. At points, they showed clear symptoms of depression and anxiety, heightened by and directly related to increasing complaints about their physical health.
Perhaps even worse, even as they approached the date for the return home, they failed to show any improvement—or what is known as “the third-quarter effect.” At the same time, the longer the mission, the fewer the attempts to regulate negative emotions and enforce positive ones.
That sounds very bleak for today’s researchers at Antarctica and tomorrow’s astronauts on Mars. The upside is that this can and should be countered with effective measures that will mitigate some of these potentially devastating effects.
“Interventions and counter measures aimed at enhancing positive emotions may, therefore, be critical in reducing psychological risk in extreme settings,” Alfano writes in the study.
Sure, on the face of it, we’re all “tough it out, you can do it,” and there’s still plenty of stigma surrounding mental health in many aspects of our life. But with space exploration, if not with anything else, that’s not the kind of risk you want to take.
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