Chapter 13: Behavioral Health and Performance

From early sea explorations in the Northwest Passage, voyages to the Antarctic, and undersea voyages of the first submarine fleets, it has been recognized that the health and performance of the human mind plays a significant role in mission success. This chapter provides a review of the current impacts on individuals and teams who fly in space from a behavioral health and performance perspective. These factors originate in space, from the ground, from operational stress, and from other sources. In addition, countermeasures that have been applied historically, currently, and for potential future missions are discussed. In this chapter, those areas of behavioral health and performance that are not unique to space flight, those that are unique to space flight, and those that will likely be encountered on exploration missions are presented. Included are human, environmental, and external factors that play a part in the overall behavioral health of astronauts. Though individual cases of emotional problems were observed, because of the privacy considerations and little impact on the mission success these cases were published in the open literature. NASA follows strict HIPAA protocols and protects individual astronaut records accordingly. Thus, most of the evidence presented in this chapter relies on clinical experience.