Stress, Coping, and Psychological Growth in Personnel in a High Arctic Weather Station

Ideas about positive change following a stressful experience have been of interest to researchers for some time (Antonovsky, 1987; Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996). A few areas of study have been developed, some with a focus on successful coping such as research on resilience, sense of coherence and hardiness, stress inoculation, posttraumatic growth, and toughening (Tedeschi, Park, and Calhoun, 1998). Suedfeld (2001) has encouraged researchers to focus on the positive effects of work in extreme and unusual environments however, only a few have done so with astronauts, cosmonauts (Ihle et al., 2006: Suedfeld et al., 2012), and high-altitude mountaineers (Smith et al., 2017).To understand the full deployment experience and growth possibilities and to identify the situational impact on the personnel in extreme and unusual environments, a study of stress perception and coping strategies is essential. Work in this domain of stress and coping has been plentiful across many extreme and unusual environments (Leon et al., 2011b; Nicolas et al., 2013; Suedfeld et al., 2009; Suedfeld et al., 2012; Suedfeld, 2015).The current study addresses an additional extreme workplace environment with a combination of stress and outcome variables. Crew members working and living at the Eureka Weather Station (Nunavut, Canada), located on Ellesmere Island at a latitude of 80° North, responded to questionnaires about coping (prior to the mission and postmission), personality (prior to mission), and psychological growth (postmission). Members spent two to four months working in the Canadian High Arctic and faced many environmental and social challenges. Data suggest that the extreme workplace is not as stressful as commonly assumed; further, members use a variety of appropriate coping mechanisms, and postexpedition growth is experienced by all.