Ukrainian syndrome. Youth in Ukraine in the face of a 2022-Full-scale Russian invasion
Authors: Matiash Mykhailo , Subbota Spartak , Lunov Vitalii 
Published: January 2023

Annotation

Since 2014, Ukraine has been in constant military conflict. Every year hundreds of killed and wounded fighters, thousands of refugees, suffering of the civilian population in the battle zone. But a real large-scale disaster came to Ukraine on February 24, 2022, when a war began, which in terms of cruelty and the number of weapons used can only be compared with the Second World War.

In fact, Ukrainian syndrome is the result of any mental trauma: war, natural disaster, accident, mutilation, violence (sexual or domestic). The Ukrainian syndrome is a certain behavioral pattern of adaptation and an individual position of a Ukrainian regarding the Russian-Ukrainian war.

Materials and methods

The Scale of non-clinical assessment of behavioral changes and social functioning (block A, B. Rate on a scale: -1 means this sign used to be characteristic of me, but now it has disappeared, or it does not bother me; 0 means I practically do not feel it, or it is absent; 1 means there are certain signs, but they do not significantly affect life and well-being; 2 means the manifestation of this sign is strong; 3 means I feel exhausted and disorganized), and the Questionnaire of the experience of being in a combat zone developed by Vitalii Lunov were used in the study. The study was conducted from April 2022 to January 2023.

4292 youth and young scientists aged 16 to 40 from 61 cities of Ukraine took part in the research.

Conclusions

In this article, we have presented only the results of the descriptive statistics of the first part of the study of the Ukrainian syndrome, which reveal the prospects for building models of the rehabilitation potential of youth affected by the long-term Russian-Ukrainian war (Subbota, 2021).

The logic of the study provided for the objectification of the impact of direct military operations and the current situation on the life, material and property status and health of the subjects. In this context, we proceeded from the model of the spatial-relational disposition of a traumatic event (Lunov, 2022), which reflects the degree of objectivity of the loss / threat at the individual, family-related levels, and the level of the immediate environment.

Thus, it is worth noting the tendency of the field of property losses in the direction of their increase from the individual level to the level of the nearest social environment. This may be one of the factors inducing social stress as the ratio of personal losses to the losses of others. Significantly large losses in the immediate environment of an individual can act as potentially significant factors in reducing the zone of personal safety.

A similar trend is observed in relation to disability, bodily injuries, physical injuries suffered because of hostilities.

In general, we note that the attention of psychologists needs to be understood to the patterns of the reduction of the influence of symptoms present before the war and the appearance of new ones during the period of adaptation to the active phase of the Russian-Ukrainian war.

The very idea that some of the pre-war symptoms and behavior patterns that could have hindered the adaptation of the respondents in the conditions of war and internal displacement have disappeared opens prospects for further research into the resourcefulness of youth.

However, we cannot ignore the emergence of new symptoms and behavioral changes, especially those that are severe and that leave young people feeling exhausted and disorganized.