Mars

Mental Health on Mars

Mars

Where is the Elon Musk/SpaceX module for mental health on Mars ? He's making a self sustaining community on Mars, so you need a sustainable mental health module that actually provides effective support for the distressed and traumatised such as Trieste/Soteria does.

"The Trieste Model is described as an ‘open door... no restraint system of care for recovery and citizenship' in the city of Trieste, Italy (Mezzina, 2014, p.440). Trieste is a city of approximately 236,000 people in the north-eastern region, Friuli Venezia Giulia. In the mid-late 20th century, policymakers in Trieste sought to transition mental health services from a clinical model based on treating illness (for example, with a focus on clinical symptom reduction), to a wider approach that focuses on aspects of their social context that can be altered to foster belonging, safety, and social inclusion".

Council of Europe: ‘Hybrid’ Approaches in Policy and Programming.

Soteria: "... we treated them without neuroleptic drugs as much as we could which was the vast majority had no neuroleptics for the first six weeks and we compared them with a randomised control group that got what we call quote “usual treatment” on the wards of general hospitals and in these two communities and you know it turned out that the vast majority of the people who went through the experimental programs got better within the first six weeks without medications ..."

Yet Another Successful Non-Drug Treatment For Schizophrenia, Yet It’s Not Being Used.

Elon Musk has said "how treacherous life on Mars will be". There will be many challenges. It may be the case that a tight knit community on Mars may be better prepared to deal with any serious trauma or distress because of the closer community connections. Of course this is exactly what the Trieste/Soteria practice of mental health shows. It may also be the case that many of the problems that create serious trauma on Earth such as corruption, abuse, discrimination and political causes may not get exported to Mars.

Mars 5000

Nick Kanas, MD (Psychaitrist) has consulted for SpaceX. His book Humans in Space, The Psychological Hurdles contains references to psychoactive medications and the usual biopsychiatry. It's the drug model of psychiatry that has caused so much trouble on Earth. So why export it to Mars ? There is evidence for the massive problems created by psych drugs (Whittaker, et al) and conversely there is hardcore evidence and multiple successful non-drug projects across many countries (as is shown on Liberation Map). If that is not understood then you'd just end up creating the same problem on Mars in a more difficult environment that would threaten the evolution and sustainability of the Mars colony. The scifi film Outland comes to mind here. On a more positive note look at the photo's on this page of 520-day Russian project Mars 5000. Will Mars mean a more integrated and closer family like environment which the Trieste model shows as being the most healthy ? Would a Mars colony leave behind most of the peculiar types of corruption and social bigotry that creates distressed and traumatised peoplel ? HI-SEAS is another project where these questions could be answered and their existing findings may confirm correlations with the Trieste/Soteria models ... "Located on the rocky slopes of the Mauna Loa volcano on Hawai‘i Island, the Hawai‘i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) is an analog habitat for human spaceflight to Mars and the Moon."

So I'd like to see a progressive mental health Mars module for the SpaceX Mars colony. I could act as a consultant to SpaceX. Dr. Roberto Mezzina also has excellent experience in this area.

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Email: michael@michaelzfreeman.org

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