Mental health crisis emerging in Ukraine after 4 years of war

A growing memorial for the fallen soldiers can be seen in the city of Kolomyia, in the west of Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine is now in its fourth year and it is taking an unimaginable toll on the people in that country.

Memorials for fallen soldiers continue to grow, hospitals are overwhelmed by the wounded and now a mental health crisis is beginning to emerge among the teenage population.

The town of Kivertsi, in the west of Ukraine, is made up of roughly 14,000 residents. Over the past three months, 25 members of the community have been killed fighting on the frontlines of the war and those are just the deaths that have been confirmed.

“150 from this community are still unaccounted for,” said Bob Beckett.

Beckett is with the humanitarian group Vancouver Island Supports Ukraine. He led the team’s fifth mission to the war-torn country and says on every trip he sees the growing memorials taking their toll on the people of Ukraine.

“It’s madness, it’s asinine and I just cannot imagine,” said Beckett.

At a church service in the west of the country, families gathered at the Pilgrimage Center of Blessed Simeon Lukach to celebrate Palm Sunday. Father Volodymyr Lukashevskyi is the spiritual mentor and priest of the Ukraine Catholic Church.

“For us it’s a nice holiday because we know in one week it’s going to be Easter,” said Lukashevskyi.

He says the war is always on the minds of his parishioners.

“We are seeing this as a place to heal from the trauma of the war,” said Lukashevskyi. “We have so many military soldiers coming here and their mothers, everyone is praying.”

For community leaders, the length of the ongoing war has been overwhelming. Viktor Hodyk is the Mayor of Horokhiv and says he has attended way too many funerals for friends and community members over the past four years.

“This horrible war is taking the dearest things from us, the lives of our people,” said Hodyk. “We are paying the bitterest price for peace.”

Dr. Taras Melnyk is a registered child psychiatrist at the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Children’s Hospital. She says since the start of the war there has been a drastic increase in the amount of cases of depression and self-harm among the teenage population.

“Children and teenagers are under constant stress, almost all of them have lost someone close to them,” said Dr. Melnyk. “Once this war is over it is going to take years to fix the mental health crisis we’re currently experiencing.”

The impacts of the war are evident at every turn in Ukraine, yet the people are resilient—vowing to continue their fight against the invading Russian forces no matter the cost.