Psychological monitoring

Abstract

Experiences in long-term flights on space stations (e.g., MIR, ISS) have provided evidence correlating mission length and psychological factors: the longer the space mission, the more the importance of psychological factors rises, and therefore the knowledge required to understand these factors, and their changes along such a mission. Monitoring of psychological factors starts immediately in the selection process and in the preparation phase, but especially during flight, when psychological monitoring is most important and needed, while it becomes mostly difficult. Irrespective of 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 reevaluation of psychological methodology. This chapter of this books second edition addresses and reviews some general principles of psychological monitoring, summarizes the definition of the terms but also links the results from recent applications to these methods, such as psychological monitoring, team talk sessions and crewmember support.