The Ukraine Effect or Reflections on the Psychology of Ukrainian Health in War
This is just a point of view, not claiming recognition. I express it as an alternative view of everything that is happening now in the psychological space of Ukrainians’ lives.
The main thing I find necessary and appropriate is to express a view on the ethnic and national peculiarities of Ukrainians’ living in war. Not from the position of establishing diagnoses and forecasts of post-war changes. But from the deep conviction that Ukrainians are both mentally and psychologically healthy people. Tired, exhausted, sleepless, with weeping eyes, but healthy.
This publication is not my fantasy, but an obvious fact of reality. Recently, I have been hearing a lot of statements from experts that Ukrainians – both those who are at war and those waiting for them under a sky closed to peaceful life – are literally all doomed to trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder. All are those who stayed and did not go to caritas around the world. I won’t debate the ‘prominent’ ones. I will only allow myself to question such categorical predictions and explain why.
I am against the trend and strategy of total diagnosis of PTSD to Ukrainians. Here are some arguments.
So, I understand PTSD primarily as a psychiatric diagnosis. Any psychiatric diagnosis, once made, requires serious arguments to be removed over time. For its core is mental changes due to changes in the body, that is, changes in the mental health of the person. We are talking about physiological, physical damage and the consequent inevitable loss of certain capabilities in a person’s life. For example, mechanical damage to the head may lead to a loss of memory or the ability to hold attention. Or total destruction of memory or perception – a person will not be able to remember things. There are also changes in the structure of the body and the functioning of its organs. For example, if an organ or part of the body is missing, or a function is lost (vision, hearing, etc.) – there will no longer be a leg or an arm.
Thus, when there is such a serious injury, PTSD is the person’s appropriate reaction to it. The key word is reaction.
But not every reaction is a pathological reaction, the kind you might call PTSD.
The rejection reaction. When a person completely loses adaptation, is embarrassed and shunned by their own altered body, their social status and place. Starts to unreasonably aggress against the reality in which they have already become radically different. From a status of a healthy person to a status of an invalid. And when, in the presence of the whole range of rehabilitation measures, the symptoms of the psychic reaction of rejection remain unchanged. Then we are talking about the destruction of the psyche, its disintegration. As a consequence, compulsory medical support with a possible temporary stay in an appropriate institution or boarding house is required. If this is the case, it is definitely PTSD.
Reaction of residence and acceptance. If a person who has lost a function or a body part, such as vision or an organ (e.g. leg, arm), begins to manage their life in the light of these life configurations, accepting these losses, we are not talking about PTSD. Yes, there will be aggravations of mental states and reactions inherent to each person, but these states are not destructive to the psyche. Subsequently, by accepting the new realities of life and himself in these realities, the person will start a new stage in his own life.
The fatigue response. It is also worth remembering that when people are distressed, they simply become tired and need to recover for a long time. During these recovery periods, the psyche loses its usual method of regulation and begins to exhibit socially unattractive behaviours, such as alcoholism. But this is also not a reason to diagnose PTSD. It is a serious reason to address mental health. Only if the symptoms persist and worsen is it possible to consider the possibility of this diagnosis.
PTSD is a diagnosis that depends not only on the patient, but also on the professionalism of the person making it. One should be cautious.
I do not believe that all Ukrainians will “fail” in the war or disappear emotionally in it.
A significant number of specialists, especially foreign ones, demonstrate a pessimistic view of the mental health and psychological well-being of Ukrainians in this war and after its end. It is likely that such prognoses can take place, except for one thing – the existence of cardinal cross-cultural differences between Ukrainians and other ethnic groups, nations and nationalities. It should be remembered that 200 years of subjugation by the hordes did not lead to the extermination of the Ukrainians but, on the contrary, led to their complete liberation and preservation of their own languages, traditions, culture and history.
Therefore, before claiming that Ukrainians will live in misery and trauma, that there will be an increase in asocial behaviour, this is a question that will probably go unanswered. For by gaining freedom from the besotted gopher with millions of people who have lost their humanity and are degraded in poverty, alcoholism and drugs, people are not going crazy, but are returning to their minds.
And there is no need to predict poverty for us. Ukrainians have never received anything good from the government; they have been earning it themselves.
I am taking the position that Ukrainians are creating a new standard of human life by their actions.
Yes, I am deeply convinced that by holding the defence for the fifth hundred days, working to the front without a rear, because the Devil has gone mad with his own evil and, choking on the blood of Ukrainians, has already begun to drink the blood of his slaves, Ukrainians have shown the world the courage and the military tactics that will be studied for hundreds of years to come. A new generation of people, capable of defending territorial integrity and indivisibility, is being born. These aspects should be kept under close observation, rather than ascribed to a commonplace truth that has lost its meaning. Because the psychiatry and war of Ukrainians are incompatible, opposite and will never have anything in common.
The only thing that will be significant for Ukrainians is to lose their crush on their leaders and to stop praising them. Because if this does not happen, then everything that makes sense now will be lost, and Ukrainians will disappear in filtration camps, gulags, concentration camps. And what remains will not cause any meaning and interest.
That is why either in PTSD or in trauma, mankurts and collaborators do not feel pain, because they lost something that could feel pain. Shadow people, but more on that later.
