Finding Joy in the Artemis II Astronauts and in Psychiatry
Key Takeaways
- Clinical psychiatry’s focus on pathology and stigma can eclipse joy, despite its relevance to meaning, morale, and professional sustainability.
- Joy differs from hedonic happiness and is often facilitated by authenticity, relational gratification, and values congruence, with possible biological variability in capacity.
Artemis II astronauts spark a psychiatrist’s look at “joy trains,” music, and meaning—practical ways teams rekindle joy and prevent burnout.
PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS
After a picture-perfect landing near San Diego, the Artemis II astronauts began to provide their reflections on their journey, a heroic one in Joseph Campbell terms.1 The comments that got my initial psychiatric attention were those of Jeremy Hansen, the representative from the Canadian Space Agency. It was along the same lines as the unity in diversity that I highlighted in prior comments last week about the mission.
Joy is not a very common word that I have heard in my 50-year career in psychiatry.2 Research into it seems limited. That omission probably occurs for several reasons. One is that we generally encounter the distress in patients and sometimes the worse behavior in humans, as I especially did while working part time in a men’s prison. In comparison with the rest of medicine, we analyze for psychiatric meaning any desire to get us a present, unlike the rest of medicine. The surrounding stigma can seem oppressive.
Previously, I had also wondered how it could be possible for coders of reimbursement of our work could be joyful. But when I was asked to do a seminar series for the internet broadcast Talk Ten Tuesday some years back on them and their work, I found it. The joy could come from recognition and appreciation of a difficult and important job done well.
That coder possibility of joy seems to fit what joy is all about.3 It is a core human experience, perhaps even describable as a virtue, but complex and full of depth, deeper than the emotion of happiness. There seem to be 3 conditions that help to elicit joy: growing in authenticity; growing in gratifying relationships; and growing more aligned with one’s values. All these conditions connect with what gives life the most meaning. Perhaps one of these experiences is what is written in a common fortune cookie prediction: “An unexpected event will bring you joy.” Even so, we can also do what we can to find and meet those conditions for joy. Although there is much more research about predisposition toward happiness, it seems that people also vary in their biological predisposition to feel joy. If you need to see joy at its peak, just go back and view any of the videos of the tears of joy in the recent acceptances to college or medical school.
When Hansen began his comments at their work home of Johnson Space Center in Houston, he said this about joy:
“We have a term in our crew that we coined a long time ago, the ‘joy train’. And it sounds like you saw a lot of joy up there. There was a lot of joy. We’re not always on the joy train, this crew, there are many times we’re not on the joy train, but we are committed to getting back on the joy train as soon as we can. And that is a useful life skill for any team trying to get something done.”
Music often accompanies and enhances joy. The astronauts were woken up in the morning to selected music. My choice for such a song would have been the jazz great Sun Ra’s repetitive and rhythmic, “Space is the Place.” It goes like this:
Space is the place
Space is the place
Space is the place, (and on like that as long as Sun Ra preferred)
You get it? On a different level, Beethoven’s Choral Symphony #9 includes excerpts from Schiller’s poem “Ode to Joy,” often played and sung at the most successful resolution of major social psychiatric conflicts, like the fall of the Berlin Wall.4 I would anticipate it being played if there is ever any realistic promise of lasting peace in the Mideast. The Christmas carol “Joy to the World” is a perennial popular holiday song. It helps for any of us to have music that gives us joy in difficult times.
Then there are the psychedelics, used both in underground settings and in formal psychiatric research. As a troubled, but successful financial innovator, as many of his wealthy colleagues were, Omani Carson found that taking a psychedelic jumpstarted a new joyfulness.5
When I was medical director of a community mental health center in Houston, our team looked for and found joy in a challenging situation of inadequate resources for caring for patients with serious mental illness. The joy came from mutual values of what each person and discipline contributed.6 We celebrated all representative cultural and religious holidays. The joy can and did contribute to warding off burnout. Patients were sometime included in the joyful experience. When the outcome is positive, mutual joy is appropriate to express.
Cherish that. Board your own joy train to enjoy psychiatry. That train ride can take you to better physical and mental health.
Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specializes in the social, cultural, ethical, spiritual, and religious aspects of psychiatry, and since 2012 is in retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekdays column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He has been an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physical burnout, and xenophobia, among other social justice causes, serving on many related local and national community and professional Boards. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.
References
1. Campbell J. The Hero’s Journey:Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work. New World Library; 2014.
2. Moffic HS. Joy of psychiatry. Psychiatric Times. October 12, 2022.
3. King PE. Joy distinguished teleological perspectives of joy as a virtue. Journal of Positive Psychiatry. 2019;15(1):33-39.
4. Moffic HS. Turning despair into joy in music, psychiatry, and society. Psychiatric Times. October 6, 2025.
5. Klebnikov S. Meet the billionaire financial advisor who embraced psychedelics and found bliss. Forbes. February 5, 2026. Accessed April 13, 2026.
6. Moffic HS, Adams G, eds. A Clinician’s Manual on Mental Health Care: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Addison-Wesley; 1982.
