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Psychological Monitoring

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Stress Challenges and Immunity in Space

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Abstract

Experiences in long-term flights on space stations (e.g. MIR, ISS) have provided evidence that correlates mission length and psychological factors: the longer the space mission, the more the importance of psychological factors, the required knowledge about these factors, and their changes.

The monitoring of psychological factors starts immediately in the selection process and in the preparation phase, but especially during the flight, when psychological monitoring is most important and needed, while it becomes mostly difficult.

Irrespective of if and how psychological monitoring is to be fully understood, it must first be viewed as an essential support tool for the crew, parallel to the technical monitoring systems e.g. of fuel and water quality. Rigorous selection of the crew favors those who are tough, enduring, well-trained, performance-oriented, and unaccustomed to “needing” the help of psychologists. Although these participants are honest in subjective self-evaluation, they tend to exhibit repression. This requires rethinking, and re-evaluation of psychological methodology.

This chapter addresses and reviews some general principles of psychological monitoring. The methods used should be objective, nonobtrusive, nondisrupting, mission related, useful for crew itself (immediate expert-system based feedback) as well as not be tedious, artificial or abstract, so that they will not be avoided but accepted by the crew. There is a heightened need for new measurements and methods which are objective, reliable, computerized, continuously, or at least repeatedly, applicable in order to achieve – in a perfect setting – monitoring of nearly all behavior and performances during a mission. Numerous (newly developed) methods that can be helpful to achieve this goal are based on video observation, event counting, performance measurement, time measurement, and psychophysiological measurement, but also self-reports. To which degree they are helpful in assessing stress and stress-responses, and health relevant issues, are described.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. DLR, Cologne, Germany

    Bernd Johannes

  2. Department of Psychiatry The Netherlands SELPH-Studies in Ethics, Life-issues, Psychology and Health, Social psychology/Medical ethics VU University medical centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Berna van Baarsen

  3. ISU International Space University, Strasbourg, France

    Berna van Baarsen

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  1. Bernd Johannes
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  2. Berna van Baarsen
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Correspondence to Bernd Johannes .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Klinikum Großhadern, Klinik für Anästhesiologie und, Universitätsklinikum München, Marchioninistr. 15, München, 81377, Germany

    Alexander Chouker

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Johannes, B., van Baarsen, B. (2012). Psychological Monitoring. In: Chouker, A. (eds) Stress Challenges and Immunity in Space. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22272-6_19

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