Ukraine

Forget me not

“Forget me not” is an international project that helps Ukrainian society to overcome the mental health crisis caused by Russian aggression.

About the project

The war in Ukraine has led to a mental health crisis in the country. There has been a sharp increase in the number of mental disorders. The “Forget me not” project aims to help overcome this crisis. The project's activities include developing a training program for psychological first aid (PFA) to educate the largest possible number of people in Ukraine. The project also includes training the first Ukrainian PFA assistants and instructors. The project is aimed at Ukrainian communities which want to help create a psychologically safer environment for their citizens. The project also seeks to ensure that public institutions of state administration, educational institutions, police, and hospitals have trained psychological first responders. These professionals will eventually form a self-organizing national network for psychological first aid with its own center of expertise.

Russia's war in Ukraine has led to a mental health crisis in the country. According to the World Health Organization and the Ukrainian government, the number of people suffering from mental illnesses has increased by 436 percent compared to 2018. At the same time, funding for treatment facilities has decreased by 50 percent over the same period. The reason for this is the economic crisis in the country, which has been severely affected by the war. Even in the “good” year of 2018, the Ukrainian healthcare system was only able to offer appropriate help to around 30 percent of all people in need of psychological support. Now, the mental health system is on the verge of collapse due to a hundredfold increase in the number of patients, a shortage of staff, and a lack of funding.

Most initiatives currently being conducted in Ukraine to maintain the mental health of the country's citizens focus on rebuilding the medical-psychiatric infrastructure, improving the qualifications of personnel, and training medical staff. The FMN approach is alternative and seeks to utilize societal resources for prevention and treatment beyond the official structures of a completely overloaded health system. The endeavor believes that the mental health crisis in Ukraine can only succeed through a broad involvement of societal groups. Therefore, the project's goal is to create a network of trained non-medical helpers and trainers for Psychological First Aid (PEH) in Ukrainian communities.

For the project, an online resource center with methods, tools, and a database of international experts was created. Additionally, a learning platform for online training was developed. Ten Ukrainian experts were selected and trained to develop a customizable methodology for leading peer-to-peer groups. Moreover, "Mental Health Assistants" were trained to initiate and supervise self-help groups based on the developed methodology. Two pilot groups are testing the initiative before further steps for establishment and scaling are initiated.