Psychological support in war-torn Ukraine helps Artem find his smile again
For Artem*, the office of the psychologist is like home because “you can have tea here” and “Lyudmila can find solutions for everything.”
At the start of the full-scale war, Artem, his parents and two older siblings urgently evacuated from their home in Brovary district. When they returned on 1 May 2022 – their home was no more.
All gone
“The neighbours told us that our home was destroyed on March 23, 2022,” says Iulia, Artem’s mom.
Iulia pauses briefly. “It was painful for the children. All they had, all their belongings, toys, and cozy nooks, were wiped out. My husband was also crushed. He was proud that much of our home was his handiwork. The only things we were left with were our identification papers.”
Officially designated as internally displaced, the family rented a house in their native village. “I think for two weeks, we didn’t have any reaction. We were all simply frozen,” Iulia remembers. “One day, my daughter, who was 13 then, said: ‘Let’s start removing the bricks.’ We all nodded, still frozen, to this signal to start doing something, to begin healing.”
The work was slow, and it’s still ongoing with the occasional help of various reconstruction programs. Meanwhile, Artem and his siblings distracted themselves by planting cabbages and flowers around the tank and painting its removable parts in blue and yellow. A neighbour posted the children’s project on social media, and it quickly became a media sensation. “Many journalists came,” Iulia explains. “One wanted to interview Artem for a documentary.
When the journalist asked him, ‘What is war?’, Artem burst into tears. That was a sign. I knew in that moment that we could not cope with the trauma on our own.”
Iulia learned about the SOS Children’s Villages Family Strengthening Program from her neighbours. There, she met with a social worker and filled out the necessary paperwork, and soon after that, the family began receiving help.
Finding a way
Artem and his sister began attending different children’s group activities, like art therapy, financial literacy through games, and tutoring for school. “My eldest says he doesn’t need help for now, but we leave the door open,” Iulia says. She has joined the parental groups for self-help and psychological counselling. Her husband, busy with work and rebuilding their home, has yet to find time to benefit from the program.
“Everything we get from SOS Children’s Villages is useful to us,” the mother says. “From the medications for seasonal flu for the children to the tutoring and counselling, especially the psychological support.” She explains that the tutoring helped Artem and his sister to close some educational gaps caused by the pandemic and the first year of the war.
Iulia credits the psychological support for helping Artem smile again. “The full-scale war really hurt his emotional wellbeing. He withdrew into himself. Also, he was a bit stigmatized by his schoolmates for losing everything. This was painful for him,” she pauses. “But Lyudmila found a way to help!”
For every child
Lyudmila has been a psychologist and child therapist with the Brovary program of SOS Children’s Villages Ukraine since December 2023. For Artem and many other children in the program, Lyudmila is the person of trust who can find solutions for everything. She explains: “I love my job, and I love children. Every child is important to me.”
While Lyudmila approaches each child individually, she says that age plays a significant role in helping children overcome trauma. “When the family must move, it’s easier for the smaller children. For them, home is where the parents are. It’s more complicated for pre-teens and teens. They’ve not only lost a home. They’ve lost their social surrounding. They’ve lost important things that shape their personality. Reclaiming these parts of their lives is a common ask from these age groups.”
In a safe space
Step one in Lyudmila's approach is creating an atmosphere of safety that closely resembles a home. “It begins with a safe space,” Lyudmila says. “Once children feel safe and comfortable, I use different methods to find out what support they need and how to help them. I try to find out what happens at home and how the bonds between the parents and the children are.”
Lyudmila’s calm and serene demeanour truly makes any room a safe space. When Artem and the other children can’t pinpoint why they feel safe and comfortable there, they usually say because they can have tea, just like at home. And for Lyudmila, home is the crucial designation.
“I do a lot of the therapeutic work here in the office, but even more must be done at home,” she says. “I update parents on the progress and advise them on what to do and how to act at home. A lot can be achieved at home because it’s a flexible environment where the children are most relaxed.”
Time to heal
In the context of war, Lyudmila says that we must not forget that the parents are also traumatized and need to cope with loss. “War makes everyone vulnerable,” she says, “and big traumas take a very long time to heal.”
Lyudmila gives the example of her grandmother, who, as a child, survived the Holodomor (the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933): “All her life she stocked food. She needed to have food always and in quantities. The Holodomor was a major trauma for her. She kept telling us we must eat, eat, eat, always eat.”
Going forward
Asked what the consequences of the war trauma are like for the children, Lyudmila explains: “It’s hard to speak about consequences now because the basic need for security is not satisfied. This need significantly influences children and how they develop.
“Once victory and peace are achieved, an important thing that would be needed to overcome the trauma is having a healthy and adaptive society. The community needs to give possibility and help displaced people to adapt. The bullying because of the different experiences should stop. The society needs to develop. There’s still room for improvement in this area.”
Lyudmila stresses the need for more and continuous information sharing about the importance of mental health and the availability of helpful resources. “Today, we have many opportunities to find professionals and resources for mental health and psychological support. Both online and offline, like in our parental groups, adults can find tools and methods for practicing self-help and self-regulation. With some guidance, they too can help their children at home.”
Getting better
Back to Artem, his mom says that the major shift happened when he began getting individual psychological counselling from Lyudmila.
“She found a way to explain the difficult topics,” Iulia says. “Before, when I’d speak with him, we’d both just cry. After each session with Lyudmila, his behaviour would slightly improve, and his emotional state would become a bit better. In less than a year, his disdain for going to school went away. He began liking school again.”
Nowadays, Artem openly speaks about what bothers him with both his mom and Lyudmila. He’s straightforward regarding whom he needs to talk with: “He’d tell me, ‘Mom, I need Lyudmila now.’ Then I book him an offline or online session. He likes to tell me how it went, and it’s usually the same sentence: ‘Lyudmila helped me a lot today.’”
*Name changed to protect privacy