After four months of war, everyone in Ukraine feels “that our psychological state is not what it should be,” the Ukrainian first lady told Time magazine. She wants to help ensure that post-traumatic stress can be treated.
The Ukrainian President’s wife Olena Zelenska worries about the psychological stability of her country’s society. The war could have “huge consequences” for Ukraine, “if we are confronted with post-war post-traumatic stress that remains untreated,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s wife told the US magazine “Time”.
Her own family is also under psychological pressure from the Russian war against Ukraine. “Every day you read and hear about it, you absorb it, and that has an impact,” Selenska said. “Each of us, including myself, has felt that our psychological state is not what it should be.” After four months of war, “none of us are doing well”.
The beginning of the war forced the Zelenskyjs to part. While the President stayed in Kyiv, his wife and two children had to go into hiding. Friends in Europe have offered the family to take them in for the duration of the war, writes “Time”. But Selenska and her children stayed in Ukraine. They had been forced to move about to avoid being attacked; At the beginning of the war, Zelenskyi said that he himself was the number one target for Russia, and his family was the number two target. Now they see each other more often; the interview was conducted at the President’s official residence in Kyiv, according to “Time”.
“You just hope that you’re safe now,” Selenska said of the first days of the war. “You don’t know what’s going to happen in two hours.” For security reasons, the three were initially not allowed to communicate with the President via video link. For weeks they spoke only over secure phone lines that had to be arranged in advance. Instead, the children often saw their father on television.
Meanwhile, Selenska has made it her mission to help the country deal with the collective and personal trauma. On Mother’s Day, she met Jill Biden, the First Lady of the United States, at a school in western Ukraine that serves as a shelter for displaced families. Since then, she has appeared frequently on the international stage as an advocate for Ukraine. In May, she launched an initiative by the Ukrainian government to organize psychological support for Ukraine. This initiative has already started training trauma counselors, setting up psychological hotlines and bringing in foreign experts for clinical support.
In Ukraine there is “a particular distrust of terms that contain the word ‘psycho’,” she told Time, adding that psychotherapy is more associated with state asylums in which the sick are isolated. Back in the Soviet Union, the attitude was, “Deal with it, get over it, and if you complain, you’re weak.”
According to “Time”, the Ukrainian Ministry of Health estimates that 15 million people – almost a third of the population – need psychological care. Around 8 million people were displaced by the war. The number of military personnel has roughly tripled to more than 700,000 since the invasion began, and many of them are believed to be traumatized during their service.
She herself receives support from the First Lady of Israel, Michal Herzog, and the Polish President’s wife Agata Kornhauser-Duda. “Our club was a big help,” said Zelenska. “We understand each other.”
