Aerospace psychiatry

[reca]

Anyone know much about this and how to get exposure to it during residency?

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[watermanMD]

NASA JSC Aerospace Medicine Clerkship--available twice a year. I did it in med school but there are residents and attending's who also did it.

 

[Stagg737]

What does aerospace psychiatry actually entail? Sounds like a made-up (albeit cool) sub-specialty.

 

[watermanMD]

Heavy involvement in the screening and astronaut selection process, as well as teleconferences with astronauts on station. Any psychiatric emergency that may arise. Caring for the mental health of astronaut families. Being involved in design of living quarters, updates to the ISS, etc. For instance, a whole new lighting system was recently installed in the ISS where in the evenings a non-blue light is used throughout the cabin (kind of like a night mode on our phone), while a more blue light is used during the day--from what I remember, this was driven largely by the psychiatric group.

 

[clozareal]

Start with this book as an introduction: Space Psychology and Psychiatry.

Find programs where there are attendings or faculty who work on this type of psychiatry and contact them for mentorship.

Then if you want to do research in this area, you can move on to this book: Sensory Motor and Behavioral Research in Space

 

[psyguru]

I plan on doing the FAA training to conduct fitness for duty IMEs for pilots, etc. I am a forensic psychiatrist. Occupational psychiatry is a related field and they have an organization.

 

[ArdorAyurveda]

I plan on doing the FAA training to conduct fitness for duty IMEs for pilots, etc. I am a forensic psychiatrist. Occupational psychiatry is a related field and they have an organization.

Does the FAA training to qualify you to conduct fitness for duty IMEs for astronauts?

I'm interested in both forensic psychiatry and doing an aerospace medicine fellowship, so I'm very curious to hear your thoughts.

 

[WisNeuro]

Does the FAA training to qualify you to conduct fitness for duty IMEs for astronauts?

I'm interested in both forensic psychiatry and doing an aerospace medicine fellowship, so I'm very curious to hear your thoughts.

Last I knew, NASA does it's FFD evals all in house. They have a different set of P&P. Although with NASA losing a ton of funding in recent years, may have changed.

 

[ArdorAyurveda]

Last I knew, NASA does it's FFD evals all in house. They have a different set of P&P. Although with NASA losing a ton of funding in recent years, may have changed.

Thank you!

 

[watermanMD]

Yep, like @WisNeuro said, it's all internal. And there's actually an aerospace psychiatrist who also does forensics and jail work.

 

[Mass Effect]

I plan on doing the FAA training to conduct fitness for duty IMEs for pilots, etc. I am a forensic psychiatrist. Occupational psychiatry is a related field and they have an organization.

I didn't even know occupational psychiatry was a thing. How do people get involved in that?

 

[psyguru]

I didn't even know occupational psychiatry was a thing. How do people get involved in that?

They have a small organization. I am not too familiar with it. I do fitness for duty and other occupational exams and interact with occupational medicine and occupational nurses. I am a forensic psychiatrist.

 

[psyguru]

Does the FAA training to qualify you to conduct fitness for duty IMEs for astronauts?

I'm interested in both forensic psychiatry and doing an aerospace medicine fellowship, so I'm very curious to hear your thoughts.

FAA training I think is for pilots and othet airline staff perhaps. I am not sure who does the astronaut exams. You could ask Gary Bevin MD.

 

[Mass Effect]

They have a small organization. I am not too familiar with it. I do fitness for duty and other occupational exams and interact with occupational medicine and occupational nurses. I am a forensic psychiatrist.

Yeah, I thought about forensics but didn't want to do criminal exams. I am interested in occupational medicine though. Wondering if I can get into that as a psychiatrist without a forensics fellowship. I'll look into occ health groups.

 

[psyguru]

Yeah, I thought about forensics but didn't want to do criminal exams. I am interested in occupational medicine though. Wondering if I can get into that as a psychiatrist without a forensics fellowship. I'll look into occ health groups.

You dont have to be a forensic psychiatrist to join that group. You do not have to be a forensic psychiatrist to do an occupational IME. Many other fields do IMEs and have no forensic fellowship or certification. You could go the SEAK conference, learn the AMA impairment scales (which I have not used but have had a lecture on). In many states forensic certification is required for certain criminal exams. There are types of cases that you could do.

 

[birchswing]

Is aerospace psychiatry that thing where they ask if there's a doctor onboard the flight, but you're hesitant to stand up because you're a psychiatrist, but no one else stands up, so you finally stand up and announce you're a psychiatrist, but then you're tackled by a scientologist, and then these three ultra-orthodox jews start applauding because they also oppose psychiatry, and then you get out of the chokehold of the scientologist and climb your way to the patient, and the flight attendant says there's no time, so you instinctively grab a bic pen you happened to have in your pocket and you perform an emergency tracheotomy, and you save the woman's life, but the flight has to be diverted to greenland, but on the good side you get a hero's welcome, and they put you up in a bed and breakfast and you sneak some extra scones from the breakfast to eat through the rest of the day and it's enough food to get by on very comfortably?

If that's aerospace psychiatry, I have always been fascinated by that field.

 

[Alemo]

There's a great aerospace psychiatry review article in JAPPL (Psychiatry and Fitness to Fly After Germanwings March 2020 issue) that discusses the Germanwings crash in 2015. One of the authors, Charles Chesanow, appears to be the chief psychiatrist for the FAA.

 

[UpstateForensicPsychiatry]

Last I knew, NASA does it's FFD evals all in house. They have a different set of P&P. Although with NASA losing a ton of funding in recent years, may have changed.

A colleague of mine does them once a year. My understanding is that they pair up a psychologist with psychiatrist and together they perform a certain number of evaluations in one day, and then dictate the reports at the end of the day. It's fascinating work, but very difficult to get into - despite it paying the experts next to nothing. Additionally, a lot of the evaluation is designed for you, as NASA has their own internal research on the aspects they want to you to cover- and it's all proprietary, so I don't think you can read up ahead to any significant extent before you go there. But, alas, much of it remains a mystery to me, as my colleague can't really talk much about it!