Phase I involved systematic reviews of the existing literature on (a) psychotherapy techniques currently and historically used on space missions and; (b) existing technologies (e.g., video diaries, virtual reality immersion) with the potential for use in the asynchronous delivery of psychotherapuetic techniques to astronauts. Phase II used the knowledge gained from Phase I to inform the design of a three-arm randomized clinical trial aimed at evaluating the feasibility, acceptability, and efficacy of the most promising technologies, alone and in combination, for asynchronous delivery of empirically supported psychotherapeutic skills. Products of this study included best practice guidelines for asynchronous delivery of empirically supported psychotherapuetic techniques during long-duration space missions. A total of 56 “astronaut-like” participants experiencing elevated psychological distress were randomly assigned to one of the three treatment conditions. Protocols were updated to allow for remote recruitment. An additional 89 participants were enrolled remotely from varying Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) universities and science laboratories. In total, 145 participants were enrolled to the randomized clinical trial (RCT) out of 300 individuals screened. Upon finishing the 7-week treatment, participants completed a post-treatment assessment and an exit interview over the phone. A 1-month follow-up assessment was also administered to participants

RESULTS:

All survey data was collected via Qualtrics and exported to SPSS for analysis. An excel codebook was created to describe the contents, structure, and layout of the final data base. Main study analyses indicated that there were significant reductions in depression, anxiety, and stress, and improvements in work, life and social functioning from baseline to 1-week post treatment. These findings were apparent in all treatment conditions. There were no time by group treatment effects.

There were also no differences across conditions regarding level of support provided, confidence in the program, level of comfort (e.g., sharing personal information, thoughts and feelings), and level of skill. There was a significant group difference in the number of logins into the MyCompass program with participants in the delayed video support condition logging in more than those in the MyCompass only and the delayed-text support conditions.