Social-demographic and psychological characteristics of ukrainians who left the country as a result of russian military aggression

Abstract

Topicality. The war that the Russian Federation launched against Ukraine on February 24, 2022 caused sudden changes in the life of Ukrainian society. People lost their homes, loved ones, were separated from their families and permanent surroundings, or witnessed violence, destruction and mass murders. Such extreme traumatic events usually affect people by causing psycho-emotional reactions such as fear, numbness, sadness, depression, anxiety or apathy. Part of the population of Ukraine was forced to leave their place of residence, seeking refuge from the threats of war outside the country. In the new place, the refugees were faced with unusual living conditions and surroundings, lack of knowledge of the language, lack of prospects for employment and education in the near future, which caused another stressful psycho-emotional state. And although professional psychotherapeutic help is continuously provided to Ukrainian refugees after February 24, 2022, quantitative measurements of the psychological state of refugees and analysis of these data are insufficient. Our work is an attempt to fill in this gap and take the first steps to analytically highlight the psychological conditions of Ukrainian refugees using the example of one city in Europe. The purpose of the publication: to analyze the aggregated indicators of anxiety and depression of Ukrainian refugees, taking into account basic sociodemographic indicators. Methods and materials. This study is based on information about 127 Ukrainians, refugees as a result of the war in Ukraine, who received temporary asylum in a small (population less than 20 thousand) European city and who were provided with psychological counseling and psychotherapeutic help for 6 months (from April to October 2022). With their consent, gender, age, social status, losses, subjective feeling of anxiety and depression were recorded; statistical and comparative methods were applied. Results. It was established that among all the refugees who took part in the study, the majority of people were from the southern (38.6%) and northern (26.0%) regions of Ukraine, and the minority — from the central (13.4%), eastern (14.1%) and western regions (7.9%). Among them, 75.6% were female and 24.4% were male. The average age in the sample was 40.92±18.96. The vast majority (86.0%) of respondents focused on losses of a social nature: loss of work, possibility to continue studies, social environment and connections, and to a much lesser extent (14.0%) pointed out losses of a material nature: losses of homes or property. In relative terms the share of anxiety among all men in the sample is 48.4%, while among women it is 37.5%. A completely different situation with depression. The quantitative ratio of women to men in the sample is ≈ 3:1, while the prevalence of depression in women compared to men is ≈ 6:1. Among men, the total frequency of states of anxiety and depression occurred in 64.5% of cases, among women — in 69.8% of cases. In men manifestations of anxiety and depression had the ratio: 75% and 25% respectively; in women their distribution is different: 53.7% — anxiety, 46.3% — depression. In the overall structural division anxiety (58.6%) prevails over depression (41.4%). The mean age for depressions is higher compared to anxieties (45.0 vs 41.8) and both higher than the overall mean age in the sample (40.9). Conclusions. The generalized portrait of the average Ukrainian refugee in our study is a working woman with school-aged children from the southern or northern regions of Ukraine, for whom social losses were the most important. It was established that anxiety and depression were equally common among women with a slight predominance of anxiety. Men, on the other hand, indicated anxiety much more often — only a quarter of all mental disorders in men was depression. The overall maladaptive behavior of depression was manifested in the form of a disruption tothe daily routine, eating disorders, alcohol abuse. It was found that the average age of mental states of anxiety and depression is higher than the overall average age in the sample.