The Martian: Mark Watney A Brief Psych Evaluation - Post Mars

Post Mars Evaluation.

Mark has demonstrated some very extreme personality strengths over the last couple of years. To be honest I don’t know how he’s still standing at this point. After over a year of near total isolation, I’m not sure how well he will integrate back with society, but for now he’s stable.

As we thought, his sarcasm and humor served him well. He wrote in a journal fairly frequently during his time on Mars, and through that we’ve pieced together a testimony for evaluation. Upon initial inspection, it seems he created another person to tell his story to. That person in his log was most likely his parents or a close friend. It’s hard to know for sure, but he has quite a lot of passion in his words, and short hand speech. It’s almost like he was a child and his journal was an imaginary friend.

This is probably the number one reason he pulled through. He created himself a friend to share the experience with.

On top of that, he did manage to regain contact with NASA. Text based communication has many drawbacks compared to real face to face or even over the phone interaction. It was enough of a drip feed though to boost his spirits and keep him going. You can see a shift in his journal as well. During the time when he has contact with NASA, he seems more upbeat and a bit like a kid whining to his friends that his parents make him do chores. When he is isolated, he treats the journal more like a confidant with intimate details and much more true feelings. These 2 things alone contributed more to saving him than any other.

Despite hating Disco music and 70’s TV shows, they provided a much needed distraction from how dire his situation was. Music and TV have been tested for decades to determine what affect they have on people, and 9/10 any music or TV is welcome to no music or TV. The effect only grows as people become more disconnected, as we are able to form simple bonds with these types of medium. They are in our lives, so we form an attachment to them. Marc is an extreme case of this to be sure. We probably could have had him watch anything though, and we would have gotten the desired results. 

Marc’s inner stubbornness is the final deciding factor for him surviving. He decided he wanted to live, and he was going to be damned if anything killed him. That trait is honestly not a rare one, but when coupled with his excellent coping skills and the fact that he actually kept a journal. We have a recipe for success here. Good mental health brought him home, just as much if not more than, the rockets that made the journey.

In All, Mark is going to need a lot of help. Given the seriousness of his circumstances, we would be amiss to even attempt to put him back to work in the next few months. Perhaps years. All of that will come after a full detailed interview where we can actually assess how bad his depression and anxiety issues are. Only time will tell how much we can actually help him recover. Odds are that he will always suffer martian nightmares, but he can probably survive those too.