healing the healthy ones

why we must focus on psychological prevention regarding future Mars missions

Have you ever read through an astronaut’s biography? If so, you might probably agree with the idea that most of them resemble fairy tales! Perfect CVs, qualifications, experiences, and in addition to that: extraordinary social skills. Someone who goes to space is a person to work hard, have discipline and on the other hand, the courage and the vision to fulfill its own dreams. Furthermore, astronauts are trained and taught in all kind of different aspects, starting from dentistry, repairing things, science, group communication skills and foreign languages.

We are dealing with people, who never experienced real boredom (because they always found something they were interested in). We are talking about people, who don’t know the feeling of being isolated or confined – not in a space simulation - but in reality. That could include the experience of being bullied or spending a long time in jail, not knowing when this situation might change. These people haven’t experienced sensory deprivation the way a person being internalized in hospital could talk about.

But if we think about long-term missions to Mars, this is what will happen to our astronauts: boredom and low workload during the flight, sensory deprivation due to an artificial environment and isolation. How does a person, who is born to be a pioneer, an explorer, deal with the basic feeling of having anything to do? And further, how can we teach these people in advance to deal with those difficulties, to establish methods to prevent themselves from psychological problems, such as occurring depression or fatigue.

Psychological prevention is likely a solution. But does that mean we need to receive therapy, before we even have an issue to work on? Go to the doctor, extract our soul and start overthinking our complete childhood without having a real reason for it?

In this case, we need to change our way of thinking concerning prevention. Maybe this example might help:

Imagine you are visiting a doctor in order to receive a check-up and he tells you that you will have to receive a medical treatment against cancer. Not because you have cancer, but as a preventive measure! Most probably, you would react embarrassed and refuse the treatment and from the medical point of view it makes sense not to take medicine you don’t really need.
 

Now, think about it the other way around: Ask yourself what you would do in order to remain healthy and decrease the risk to suffer from cancer. Maybe, if you follow a common healthy lifestyle, you would answer something like: sports, healthy food, not smoking – and it would seem completely normal to us.

Both situations deal with the same target – avoiding cancer – but completely different.

The first one has a negative focus, willing to eliminate the hypothetically existing disease, whereas the other one deals with it from a positive point of view: do something, so you won’t have it. I would call them negative and positive prevention.

And this is how we need to think about psychological prevention. Of course we can’t use therapy methods, we use for people who see us for problems the actually have. We need to create new concepts, focusing those, who might need some psychological strategies in the future, due to the jobs they are doing or the changes in life they are addressing.

treat the healthy ones

There is an environment which actually deals with prevention. People who train to be a psychotherapist have to go through the whole process by themselves in order to understand these methods. Obviously most people don’t have specific reasons to receive therapy in that context, but the curriculum includes it in the study process. We need to evolve a deeper understanding of ourselves in order to help others. Studying psychology and following a further education as a dance therapist, I experienced this kind of prevention therapy.

I describe what happened like this: Self-therapy did not treat or heal me, but it helped me to analyze every tiny detail of myself: my reactions, my fears, my emotions. Nowadays I walk through the world as happy as I’ve been before, but I can control myself easier, self-regulate my emotions and observe changes carefully.

This is the point in prevention therapy: you don’t have a specific goal or question which brings you there. Instead, you are a person, willing to learn. The result is, you will acquire many tools you can use in every second of your life. What helps you, when you are afraid? How can you share your thoughts to others? Where do you have limitations? How can you create your own flow?

create awareness

The first thing we need to create is awareness for the importance of prevention.

Of course it is hard for you to imagine suffering from depression, if you’ve never experienced that. But if you have witnessed someone else having it, you slightly get an idea about what it could be like. The most important thing is, to be aware of it.

I suppose that most astronauts know about the psychological aspects in space, but they are not aware of it. The reason is quite obvious: most of them never experienced psychological issues in their past.

Therefore it is important to create a learning space to help these people understand and learn about psychological aspects, which can become existential on a journey to Mars.

One method to increase the awareness for psychological needs is the usage of simulations. They offer the possibility to experience stressing factors such as confinement, upcoming group dynamics and isolation on earth. Examples are ESA caves http://blogs.esa.int/caves/ or the project Concordia http://blogs.esa.int/concordia/.

Simulations show two major positive aspects:

1.                  Upcoming astronauts can train and observe how they deal with different environments.

2.                  The participants have the time and possibility to invent coping strategies.

The question, and we can’t test that before, is: how do things change if the simulation becomes 

reality? So we need to establish strategies in advance.

develop self regulation

There is one problem about people who never had problems: they don’t know how to deal with it.

I’ve seen many people growing up in a perfect world, never experiencing a challenging situation. They learn to love and trust their environment, but once a problem occurs, they don’t know how to solve it. On the other hand, a person being raised with difficulties might be more cautious, but also more capable of dealing with problems.

The factor to determine, if someone can cope with challenging situations is called “resilience”. So far, no one is quite sure, where it comes from, but one thing to be sure about is, we can train people, to be resilient. Regarding a psychological prevention, this aspect should be viewed as one of the most important ones.

improve the system

Prevention can also have a positive impact regarding our health care system.

Think about it like this: we go to see a doctor at least once a year in order to have a check-up. I conclude that there should be check-ups like these for psychological needs as well. For most people it would be the same as the dentist’s check-up.

Nevertheless, if we integrate this aspect into our system, we would be more aware of it the whole time.

One thing which could clearly improve by focusing on prevention is the image we have about therapy. It is not about slicing through our childhood, and pouring out one’s soul to a psychologist, but about developing a strong and self-reflected personality. And this is what future astronauts on Mars really need.