Loneliness was just half the problem. Social contact didn’t help.
STUDY: Cantisani A et al, PNAS 2026
STUDY TYPE: Cohort study
FUNDING: European Space Agency and Swiss National Science Foundation
Background
Long-duration space missions expose crews to prolonged isolation and confinement, a real risk factor for psychological strain, and Antarctic stations serve as a real-world stand-in for studying it. This study tracked how loneliness, paranoid thinking, cohesion, conflict, and performance evolved over an Antarctic winter, pairing self-report with wearable sensors that recorded actual face-to-face contact.
The Study
- 12 crew members at Concordia Station, Antarctica, cut off from the outside world, followed over a 10-month mission
- Loneliness, paranoid thinking, cohesion, conflict, and performance assessed by questionnaire at months 1, 3, 6, and 9
- Face-to-face contact tracked with wearable sensors
Concordia Station
Results
For these astronauts, loneliness was a struggle, but so was spending too much time around the same people. Face-to-face contact didn’t buffer any of this. Instead, it was linked to greater tension and paranoid thinking, not more support.
Both loneliness and paranoid thinking rose over the ten months. Although astronauts are carefully screened, one of the 12 crew member’s developed significant paranoia.
During the stay, social cohesion and performance abilities declined while conflict rose.
Contact also grew more cliquish by nationality, with the two subgroups increasingly sticking to themselves.
Limitations
Since the design is correlational and drawn from one 12-person crew of trained astronauts in a unique environment, these patterns may not generalize.
Practice Implications
- Both isolation, and too much contact in tight quarters, cause psychological stress, even for carefully screened and highly trained astronauts.
- NASA used sensory deprivation chambers to screen astronauts for the Apollo mission, and many experienced hallucinations with prolonged deprivation.
—Chris Aiken, MD
Director, Psych Partners
Editor in Chief, Carlat Psychiatry Report
