Houston, Can We Help This Problem?

By Lory Hough

People with histories of depression are not selected to become astronauts, but that doesn’t mean they can’t become depressed at some point in the future. “Like any other people, they’re human,” said George Abbey, director of the Johnson Space Center, shortly after astronaut Lisa Nowak famously drove 900 miles from Texas to Florida last year wearing diapers so that she wouldn’t have to take breaks. Nowak was on her way to confront a woman she believed was her romantic rival for another astronaut.

During a NASA budget hearing not long after the incident, another NASA administrator told lawmakers that the agency didn’t know that Nowak needed help. “Clearly she is in major trouble, and clearly we failed as an institution to recognize that she was very troubled.”

While all of this was going on, Cyprus native Angela Aristidou, Ed.M.’08, was nearly 5,000 miles away living in Greece. Although the news about Nowak played big in the United States, Aristidou says she doesn’t remember hearing at all about it. Much to her surprise, seven months later, she would join an ongoing project based at the Harvard Medical School that is trying to help astronauts detect depression in other astronauts. The eight-year project, which started in 2001, is funded by NASA’s National Space Biomedical Research Institute.

“Part of the thinking is that unless you’re able to detect depression in others, you’re less likely to detect it in yourself,” Aristidou says. “In-flight space conditions can be tough for astronauts. Working in isolation, they are cut off from their families, they’re with the same small group for 24 hours a day for months at a time, they sleep little, their eating cycles are disrupted, and they work a lot of hours.”

Although Aristidou is not a medical doctor and does not have a psychology background, she says the project makes use of the educational technology theories she is learning as a current master’s student in the Technology, Innovation, and Education Program.

“I’m designing part of the program,” she says, which is a series of computer-based scenarios that an astronaut might encounter while on a mission. In privacy, astronauts watch videos and take on a role within the simulation — an outside researcher, for example. In one scenario, an astronaut named Mary is talking to the camera slowly, explaining how tired she is and how nobody understands what it’s really like to be in space. Her crewmate, Helen, tells the camera that Mary was always a perfectionist during training, but now just wants to get things done, even if they are not done right. The user can also listen to an audio tape of Mary’s husband explaining that Mary isn’t as interested in their children. In some scenarios, additional material is available, such as pages from a private journal. Users then see a list of symptoms, answer a series of questions about what they think they saw, and choose a level of depression. During the debriefing, they compare their answers to what an actual doctor observed and what he or she might do in that given situation. Aristidou says one of the unique aspects of the project is that astronauts can use the training sessions in private.

“The point was to keep it self-contained on their laptops. No one else can access the information,” she says. Most astronauts are reluctant to ask for help when it comes to issues like stress and depression, she says. “They worry that it will make them appear unsuitable for their work.” They are also expected to have what author Tom Wolfe christened “the right stuff” — a toughness that is elusive and held in awe.

Initially the computerized program will be tested on 100 nonastronauts with similar IQs and educational backgrounds, then with a small group of astronauts. Down the road, Aristidou also sees the program being applicable outside the space community.

“This program could help other people who work in small communities or in isolated area with no access to professional mental health experts,” she says. “That will be very fulfilling for me — seeing the way this can positively help real people.”

About the Article

A version of this article originally appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of Ed., the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

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illustration by Jeff Hopkins, Ed.M.'05