Hours away from reuniting with their families after more than two months trapped underground, the 33 miners will be preparing mentally for a return to the world. Once they reach the surface, the men will be allowed to see two people before being placed under a 48-hour mental and physical evaluation. They will not have access to the media, though a crowd of some 1,000 journalists is currently on hand at Camp Hope.
Their mental health has been under surveillance since the beginning of the ordeal, with a team of doctors and psychiatrists monitoring their actions and emotions. They will reportedly receive psychological counseling for another six months.
Dr. James Thompson, a senior psychology lecturer at University College London, told BBC News that the experience may be difficult to internalize and some of the miners may suffer from post-traumatic stress as they try to re-adjust to ordinary life.
"It could be the memories of the event still cause them sleepless nights, that their sleep is disturbed, that they find themselves thinking of the event very, very frequently," he says.
"There will be things that trigger thinking the event, feelings, smells – the smell of earth or the clanking of a drill," he says.
"They will find to their surprise that even though they are out of the mine, they will feel that physically they are still in it. If they've had a feeling of the probability of dying… there will be an enourmous amount of emotional tension."
