By Ekaterina Mitiaev, Head of Impact and Livelihoods
Russia’s all-out assault on Ukraine over the last 26 months has been characterised by pain, suffering and immense brutality. Many thousands of people have been killed, hundreds of thousands of lives have been uprooted, and millions more have been traumatised, causing enormous humanitarian crises on several fronts. The war has been a huge social shock that Ukrainians could never have prepared for. The war affects emotional states, mindsets, relationships, everyday lives and routines, public opinion, socioeconomic situations, employment, civil activity… I could go on. The scale of these changes has not been seen in Ukraine and Europe since World War II.
According to the WHO forecast, 9.6 million people in Ukraine are at risk of acute stress, anxiety, depression, substance use and post-traumatic stress disorder, and are in desperate need of psychological support. Ukraine’s health ministry estimates that almost half of the population need such assistance, while three to four million people will likely need some form of medication.
Even before the war, mental health disorders were Ukraine’s second leading cause of disability burden and impacted 30% of people. Some of the drivers include historical Soviet-era trauma, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and COVID-19. Older generations distrust the psychiatric system because the Soviets used it as a suppressive tool before 1991 by diagnosing dissidents with mental illness and incarcerating them in psychiatric hospitals.
Shockingly, there is currently only one psychologist for every 100,000 people in Ukraine and our partners involved in mental health initiatives have highlighted that this number must be increased dramatically to meet urgent needs.
Addressing mental health challenges has always been a priority for World Jewish Relief, ever since our establishment in 1933 where we helped Jewish refugees adapt to life in the UK. The brutal war in Ukraine has only strengthened our commitment to support the mental health of our partners and project participants who have been experiencing unbelievable fear, stress, and anxiety. We are providing life-changing psychological support to thousands of Ukrainians to help them cope with the trauma of war. We are also training hundreds more mental health practitioners across the country, who are able to provide the support that is so desperately needed. From the onset of war, we have provided psychological support to over 13,871 Ukrainians.
Over the past two years we have extended our assistance to Ukrainian school psychologists who support teachers, parents, and children. Our Ukrainian partners recruited seasoned practitioners from the Israel Trauma Coalition (ITC) to conduct very popular trainings on psychological first aid to overcome stress, trauma and grief. We are supporting preschool and primary school children as well as teenagers and young people. So far, we have trained 169 Ukrainian school psychologists who in turn have already reached more than 4,850 clients.
In line with our values, “we give, we care, we act”, our support of partners’ mental health has been equally important. In all our interactions, we create safe spaces for partners to express whatever they might be feeling or need. We encourage our colleagues in Ukraine to access psychological support, take time off, organise team building activities and anything else they might need to cope with the ongoing war.
Psychologists on our programmes have highlighted that more and more people experience so called “futurelessness”. They feel they are losing direction, and the purpose of their life and work. In addition to losing their homes, their loved ones and their past lives, our participants are experiencing a loss in their autonomy over their own lives. Despite the extraordinary resilience Ukrainians have so far demonstrated, the trauma of their experience is likely to have a long-term impact on their mental health.
Our partners and their staff have also observed how participants’ chronic exhaustion and stress lead to the deterioration of memory and reduced capacity to concentrate on our programme activities. But at the same time, the willingness among participants to seek psychological help has been increasing. Owing to the advocacy work of international, local, and governmental organisations, including World Jewish Relief and its partners, attitudes towards mental health in Ukraine are improving.
Mental health practitioners have also highlighted that the human instinct for self-preservation remains strong. Inside all of us there are survival instincts which ultimately prevail. Life goes one, moment after moment, and the job of mental health practitioners is to help people focus on day-to-day living in their new reality, on finding regular tasks and activities they can undertake, doing what is within their control. Constant negative emotions eventually lead the participants to a state of apathy, so our psychologists help them remember something that they used to like, some activity they can try to enjoy again, whether it be dancing or being in nature. We support people to re-establish emotional connection with the world. Moreover, the group psychological sessions we provide create safe spaces for mainly female participants to express their emotions. Emotions which many of them are trying to supress in front of their loved ones.
Victor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, once said; “There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life”. Our partners and programmes across Ukraine have been supporting people to find meaning, rediscover hope, identify something to do, and someone to help.
During what feels to be the interminable middle of Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine, it is important to remember that among the emotions felt most prevalently by Ukrainians, including fear, grief and trauma, the most frequent is pride. Everybody, including Ukrainians themselves, has been surprised by the strength of Ukraine’s resistance and resilience. Seeing our participants rediscovering who they are, find meaning in their new surroundings, rebuild their confidence, strengthen new connections, and become role models for their children has been a real privilege. Their transformation gives all of us at World Jewish Relief strength and hope.