Astronaut Screening Process Sound, Former NASA Psychiatrist Says

NASA officials said Tuesday that astronauts, like all civil servants, can draw on a host of medical and behavioral support services.

“We have an employee program where anybody that is in any stressful situation—a death in the family, divorce and so on—can seek employee assistance, [like] counseling, that is available to any civil servant or anyone working,” said Bob Cabana, a NASA astronaut and deputy director of the Johnson Space Center, the agency’s Houston-based astronaut training facility.

Cabana stressed that NASA astronauts are a tight-knit group that draw support from each other, even as they draw on family and friends.

“The general feeling in the corps is that we look out for one another,” Cabana said of astronauts seeking medical assistance, adding that there is no stigma attached to those who do so.

But McGuire conceded that just because a support base exists, does not make necessarily an attractive option for some astronauts, pilots or other high-performing professionals whom may believe that seeking medical assistance could have future repercussions.

“Pilots, in general, tend to stay away from medical people,” said McGuire, a former U.S. Air Force flight surgeon. “[Flight surgeons] are one of the only groups that can stop them from doing what they truly love. They have the capacity to ground them.”

Gaining a pilot or spaceflyer's trust as a physician is the key, McGuire said.

McGuire said that during his term as NASA’s chief spaceflight psychiatrist, he encountered cases of post-flight malaise, especially given the intensive training and rigorous schedule in the years between an astronaut’s selection for a mission and the subsequent spaceflight.

Post-mission malaise does not affect all pilots, though it can be drawn out or fade quickly in those it does affect, McGuire added.

“I would imagine that there is somewhat of a letdown following a mission, just as there would be for anyone who has planned for and completed a significant event," said Jack Stuster, a NASA contractor involved in an experiment reviewing journals kept by ISS astronauts during their missions to track their mental states. "It might be more acute for astronauts because their flight possibilities are so limited and there's such a long preparation time."

Nowak herself touched on the inherent sacrifice the life as an astronaut entails as she prepared for her July 2006 spaceflight, but stressed that the payoff of human space exploration warranted the personal demand.

“It’s a sacrifice for our own personal time and our families and the people around us,” Nowak said in a NASA interview. “But I do think it’s worth it because if you don’t explore and take risks and go do all these things then everything will stay the same. People aren’t like that. We want to explore and expand and know more about the place around us.”

Stuster thinks it's unwise to link Nowak's behavior to her experience at NASA.

"We didn't hear about the dozens of other cases in Florida last week where people behaved oddly who weren't associated with NASA," Stuster said. "This incident really doesn't have anything to do with NASA. It has to do with human behavior and people's reactions to circumstances."

Stuster is the author of “Bold Endeavors: Lessons from Polar and Space Exploration”, a book that compares and contrasts the experiences of explorers, shipwreck survivors, astronauts and others who have endured long-duration confinement and isolation.

"Astronauts are far better prepared psychologically and technically," he said, "than explorers of the past."

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