Let's talk about traumas - the stages of a long journey
We can talk about around 3.5 million people who have been forced to leave their homes because of the war, and since most of these places where they lived have practically gone, there is no hope of returning. At the same time, a considerable number of people equivalent of a population of a small town were displaced from the front line to Transcarpathia. These nearly 72,000 refugees are also now living in the poorest region of Ukraine. According to our research among them, 65% of them are women, 45% are over 55 years old, and of course there are many children.
In our films and written articles/reports we have tried to make people see and feel the difficult-to-process experiences which people, fleeing the war, are going through, without any hope of returning to their homes, often alone or without the head of their family, with elderly relatives and small children, arrive in a part of the country without acquaintances or friends, where there is little chance of self-support or of finding appropriate employment in the middle of a war. Our research also revealed that almost a quarter (24%) of the people mainly coming from Luhansk, Donetsk and Kharkiv regions have per capita household incomes in the lowest income decile. They belong to the poorest tenth of the Ukrainian society. That is why they have chosen to wait out the end of the war in the hinterland and not to go abroad without family, extended relatives or friends. At the same time, the refugees have no connections in the region of the country where they are staying, making their vulnerability even more visible and their loneliness even more noticeable in the statistics. When looking at human relationships, our research found that before fleeing, in their place of residence where they grew up, ‘nearly half of respondents (45%) encountered at least 10 people on an average weekday, but as refugees, this is true for just over a quarter (28%). At the same time, a fifth of respondents reported some symptoms of loneliness, such as lack of company, isolation from others or feeling left out of something.’ (Extract from the research summary.)
At the mercy of body and soul
In all our missions, also in the months of spring, we have seen how vulnerable those persons are – adults, the elderly and children – who, in their loss of ground, express their pain burdened by mental distress in physical symptoms, in chronic and acute illnesses. Words get stuck where there is great mental stress and strain. We have experienced up close how the health system in a war-torn country, on the verge of collapse and focusing on fighting, can be difficult or unable to care for the seriously ill, chronic patients for whom regular medical care and medication are a matter of life and death. ‘In our research, we also examined the prevalence of certain chronic diseases and conditions. Compared with Hungary, we found a significantly worse situation particularly for depression, chronic lung diseases and high blood pressure. Almost half of the internally displaced persons we interviewed suffer from high blood pressure (45%), more than a quarter from depression (27%) and chronic lung disease (26%). Depression, as one of the most important mental illnesses, was also assessed with an objective measuring method (EHQ8). We found that 42% of those who answered the questions could be considered depressed (this exceeded the proportion of those who considered themselves depressed). In comparison, in Hungary this rate is 8%.’ (Extract from the research summary.)
Our psychologists deal with the mental support of children and adults during all our missions. Our child psychologists do a very serious, systematic work in processing the traumas they have experienced, because one of the most important tasks is to prevent intergenerational, inheritable traumas, which – as many Holocaust studies have shown – are imperceptibly built into the lives of the not yet born future generations decades later, unconsciously guiding their behaviour and reactions.
Trust and hope
With all of this we see and feel how grateful the refugees we have been serving and providing for more than a year and a half are, as their quality of life has been changed by the medical care and psychological support we have provided. This is also expressed during our personal meetings. As a result of the medical and psychological support, in our perception both adults’ and children’s visions of the future have changed. The future, which had previously seemed dark, has become brighter or more positive, a change that is essential for short- and long-term mental recovery. The future is the only thing that can be rewritten. We try to convey this perception of reality every time we provide help.
At the same time, to provide aid, we needed to build a bridge between us and the refugees in need. A bridge of TRUST. The internally displaced persons from the war zone received us with strong mistrust, on the one hand, because of the trauma they had experienced, and on the other hand, because of the news and commentaries that communicated the actions of Hungarian politicians. This is and this will be the starting point for our support for each new family and refugee shelter, where we arrive with our ambulance and the necessary medicines. However, regular presence, persistent medical and psychological work has yielded the expected results. In addition to trust, the sense of the physical and mental difference between the refugees who have been cared for a long time and the refugees freshly arrived from the war zone has become visible. We give real help when we wait patiently for our actions to prove themselves.
MedSpot Foundation, 2024
(This project would not have been realised without the support of TechSoup. Thank you!)
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Helpers and volunteers behind the front line