Harvard graduate aims to transform Ukrainian mental health

On February 24, 2022, therapist Natalie Timchenko watched the news with horror.

Russian tanks rolled toward Kiev, a beloved city where it had advised its clients throughout its nearly decade-long operation. Professional life. I recently moved to work in the Boston area Psychological Hospitals while her husband attended postgraduate studies there.

Still, she couldn’t stop thinking about all the friends, family and colleagues in Ukraine, who sheltered in place as air-raid sirens pierced the night air, or others carried rifles to guard checkpoints around the city.

She quickly created a Google form asking fellow mental health workers to volunteer their services as the Ukrainian nation struggled for its existence. It sent the form to all its international networks.

ping. ping. ping. The responses poured in.

A week later, 450 volunteers had signed up, some as far away as Australia, Japan and Israel. Finally, I broke it off after about 1,000 volunteers.

Timchenko created this startup group as an NGO, called Soul First Aid, within a month.

This international perspective — and an American voice — can be a strategic asset in gathering resources from people around the world who are following the news and eager to help in some way. This is what distinguishes FAS from other Ukrainian mental health initiatives. While the volunteer team includes therapists from Senegal and India, more than half are from the United States

“I think the West is important because a lot of people look at mental health care, in particular, as an aftereffect,” Timchenko said over breakfast at a Kiev café in September.

Her experience teaches her that Ukrainians must continually process feelings of war to support people right now, in whatever way that means.

“People think that (mental health) will be important after the war, when we are in the actual treatment phase shock “And trying to recover,” she added. “In fact, if we wait, it will be impossible to meet the scale of the needs.”

An American perspective anchored in Ukrainian votes

In the past three and a half years, First Aid of the Soul’s free, volunteer-led Zoom support groups have served more than 17,000 individuals who otherwise would not have been able to afford mental health care.

Timchenko recently earned a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. First Aid of the Soul received funding from Harvard University innovation laboratory Student Impact Fellowship Fund And from the Kyiv School of Economics to build a full-time coordination staff in Ukraine.

Her team of hundreds of volunteers aims to scale the work to revolutionize access to mental health support in Ukraine.

Timchenko considers herself an “honorary” Ukrainian: an American who grew up in Europe, was educated in Boston, and pursued her career in Ukraine after marrying a man from the country.

“I don’t come from a place, personally or professionally, where I know what’s best,” Timchenko said. “But I’m also trying to empower the local community here to have a bigger voice and also to get support from other places, because they’re in it now.”

There is no insurance in Ukraine to cover the costs of high-quality individual consultation. Psychotherapy He carries Stigma A relic of the Soviet era, just as the treatment was stigmatized in the United States until a few decades ago. Conversations about mental health became mainstream in Ukraine only after total war, as a matter of necessity.

The FAS method prioritizes taking best practices from to cut– Cutting-edge research and helping Ukrainians apply it in their specific urgent environments.

“Here in Ukraine, we don’t have the luxury of spending time reading books and thinking, ‘What’s better?’” said Natalia Yevmenko, director of the FAS branch in Ukraine. “Because it’s war, we have to be able to adapt, and very quickly, too.”

Therefore, in the first months of the invasion, the organization’s volunteer international therapists developed a structure for online psychosocial support groups rather than individual counselling.

They based this decision on research that shows the importance of forming relationships and belonging during crises, which helps prevent mental illness.

They refer to the groups as “self-compassion” groups to avoid the stigma associated with traditional “support” groups. The informal style of virtual sessions is especially necessary given the uncertainty of wartime. Each session begins with a core exercise, then housekeeping, before members share their thoughts on their current situation.

Their approach values ​​Ukrainian insights into what local people need, and ensures that every FAS Advisory Committee meeting includes Ukrainian voices at the table.

“They helped us, not from miles away, as guests, as people who sympathized with us, but she came here,” said Olena Losenka, a Ukrainian psychologist who volunteers at the FAS school. “They came to our land. They felt what we feel here.”

Serving families and cultivating sundew

Last summer, Refugee Solidarity went beyond its first virtual model by launching its “Nadia” summer camp for families, supporting families coming from besieged frontline cities.

The camps, named after the Ukrainian word for “hope,” focus on the family as a support system and use a trauma-informed approach that allows therapists to create a safe space and express compassion. Nadia’s project taught self-care techniques to 122 participants last summer, with five distinct groups joining the three-week sessions. They participated in a number of art therapy activities.

While a true “safe space” can be fleeting during war, a retreat into nature is restorative, and art has a way of empowering people to express what they feel cannot be expressed.

“The symbols that people usually draw are universal and have things in common,” said Emilia Melnyk, the organization’s project manager. “So talking about these symbols is much easier than talking directly about what the person has been through.”

Camp participants also learned Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing, or EMDR. For example, therapists have taught them the EMDR “butterfly hug,” which involves crossing the arms over the chest and tapping the shoulders rhythmically to help calm the patient. Nervous system.

“For the first five days when they were doing this exercise, when they used the butterfly exercise to breathe and move with their eyes, it became part of their routine,” Melnyk said. “They confirmed that it helped them reduce their severity anxiety Or fears that were pressuring them.”

Post-camp surveys showed a 35 percent reduction in illness-related symptoms Post-traumatic stress disorder.

Such sessions were helpful even for therapists, reminding them that they needed to take care of themselves as doctors, and to acknowledge that it was okay to feel hopeless sometimes. Yefimenko swears by EMDR herself.

“I can breathe, and I can talk to you, but at the beginning of the war, for several months, I was a nervous wreck,” Yefimenko said.

Psychologists note the absence of any dreams or Objectives For young people in front-line areas like Kharkiv, where bombing can continue 24/7. Residents find it difficult to see beyond their immediate daily lives. One therapist recalls a client asking him, “What’s the point of going to school if I’m not going to be here tomorrow?”

Ukrainians who have been traumatized by the war years need this kind of help Psychological first aid In order to confront it continuously.

“This is where a lot of ongoing care and support is absolutely necessary,” Timchenko said. “Because the people who are providing care now, if they get burned out after Ukraine wins, who will be left to help with that?”