The isolation of space can only be compared to one place on Earth  

Research on the mental health of astronauts

The human body is not made for space and more and more research confirms this, since the effects of weightlessness and cosmic radiation are great on our body. But what about the field of mental health? The psychological effects of the extreme isolation of space remain an uncharted territory as we make plans for missions to other planets.

But how can we study something like this, when we don’t have anything similar on Earth? Fortunately, one place on the planet is approaching this extreme isolation of space.

Antarctica is considered an ideal analogy for space because of its extreme environment characterized by multiple stressors similar to those of large space missions. We have small crews and limited communication during the Antarctic winter, the environment offers minimal sensory stimulation, while long periods of darkness are combined with extreme weather conditions that prohibit egress. Even evacuation for reasons of necessity is at least difficult if not impossible.

The research involved researchers from two remote research stations over the course of nine months. The psychologists monitored their mental health through a tool called the Mental Health Checklist that the participants filled out. This included feelings of control, inspiration, restlessness, fatigue, lack of concentration and more. They also monitored symptoms when someone got sick, while also collecting saliva samples to assess cortisol levels.

The results showed that their mental health worsened the longer they were isolated.

We observed significant changes in their psychology, but changes in specific areas of mental health differed among them. The most common change we observed was a steady decline in positive feelings from the beginning to the end of the mission, with no signs of improvement, even as the time for them to go home approached.

The rest of the research focused on the negative feelings of isolation, confinement and extreme conditions. However, this particular one showed that the vertical drop of positive emotions was present in all participants, while negative emotions differed among them.

Positive emotions such as contentment, excitement and admiration are important characteristics for living in a stressful environment like this. Interventions and countermeasures to enhance positive emotions are critical to reduce psychological risk in extreme environments.

The findings were published in Acta Astronautica .