If the country\u2019s mental health crisis goes untreated, overlooked grief and loss could become indelible parts of Ukraine\u2019s social fabric, with cascading effects on future generations, Nathalie Robelot Timtchenko, a mental health professional, says. \u201cYou cannot rebuild a country with people who are internally shattered,\u201d says Timtchenko, who worked in Ukraine as a clinician and now divides her time between Washington, D.C., and Kyiv.<\/p>\n
In 2022, Timtchenko founded First Aid of the Soul<\/a>, a nonprofit that has since reached more than 23,500 Ukrainians who would otherwise have gone untreated. \u201cThe nation feels like it\u2019s not okay to ask for help specifically related to mental health,\u201d Timtchenko says. \u201cAnd it won\u2019t just resolve itself with victory.\u201d <\/p>\n Timtchenko has spent years trying to convince soldiers to seek help<\/a>, only to collide with the same barrier: The mindset that therapy is for \u201cweak\u201d people. \u201cOne defender [soldier] told me, \u2018I\u2019m so tired of being a guest in my own home when I\u2019m on leave,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cThe challenge is that they feel so alone in their experience, even though they\u2019re not.\u201d <\/p>\n To address their clients\u2019 alienation, mental health professionals are creating military peer support programs<\/a> and tailored therapeutic spaces<\/a> for veterans and active-duty troops. <\/p>\n It is not only soldiers who continue to live in a nightmare of ongoing trauma. I talked to another psychotherapist from Kyiv who works with survivors of Mariupol\u2019s occupation, which began in 2022 and is ongoing. His clients spent weeks in basement shelters, listening to the shelling above them. For them, post traumatic stress disorder manifests as a hair-trigger hypersensitivity to sounds as trivial as a cup falling from a table, along with memory lapses, flashbacks, and outbursts of rage. <\/p>\n During one session with this psychotherapist, a woman began reciting the names of neighbors in her apartment building who had perished. \u201cThese memories washed over her, and she just spaced out. Went pale and started breathing rapidly,\u201d says the psychotherapist, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Natalia. \u201cThe only thing that snapped her out of her stupor was when her pet walked into the kitchen. It jolted her back to reality.\u201d <\/p>\n Another of her clients \u2014 a 60-year-old woman who lived in Mariupol under the Russian occupation before eventually escaping \u2014 managed, while there, to keep feeding the dogs living beneath her half-bombed home. \u201cFor her, it was therapy, a connection proving that life still went on,\u201d Natalia tells me.<\/p>\n At one point, a young Russian soldier interrupted her in the act of feeding the dogs, and a rapport developed between them. \u201cThis young guy \u2014 who initially spouted the Russian propaganda talking points about \u2018Ukrainian fascists\u2019 \u2014 began bringing her food from his own rations,\u201d Natalia says. \u201cAnd then he jumped from the third floor to break his legs, just so he wouldn\u2019t have to take part in this war anymore.\u201d <\/p>\n First Aid of the Soul launched \u201crespite camps\u201d to provide spaces for families to grieve and heal. One 2023 camp participant said she hadn\u2019t cried after losing her husband to the war. \u201cShe felt so ashamed,\u201d Timtchenko says. \u201cShe didn\u2019t have permission to grieve or permission to actually feel the weight of what\u2019s happening, because she\u2019s been in survival mode ever since.\u201d <\/p>\n Ukrainian therapists try to help families of the dead, missing, and captured understand that there is no right way to grieve. In 2024, Timtchenko worked with families from northern Ukraine who had experienced such losses. One woman learned that her husband and father had been rescued after being missing for a year and a half. \u201cThe amount of joy they experienced at that time, her and her daughter, was so beautiful to witness in real time,\u201d Timtchenko recalls. But other families who were still grieving distanced themselves from the women. <\/p>\n \u201cThey started cutting the two women off in conversations or stopped sitting with them at meals,\u201d Timtchenko says. \u201cThe sentiment was, \u2018Well, you don\u2019t even deserve to be here if your husband\u2019s alive.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n Children are not immune from trauma. \u201cWe had this five-year-old boy whose father went missing as a defender for several years, but they hadn\u2019t found his body yet,\u201d Timtchenko said. \u201cThe boy was energetic but hypervigilant \u2014 constantly checking on his mom, making sure his three-year-old sister was okay. Our clinician told him, \u2018You know, you don\u2019t have to be brave all the time. It\u2019s okay to have fun and not worry about your mom and sister.\u2019 His response was immediate: \u2018Well, dad\u2019s not around. I got to do it. It\u2019s my job.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n Psychologists note that young people trapped in survival mode often struggle to envision a future at all. One girl found her father after he had killed himself. \u201cShe\u2019s studying, and she\u2019s working part-time at a cafe, just because that\u2019s what\u2019s expected.,\u201d Timtchenko says. \u201cBut there\u2019s no passion, no inspiration. She can\u2019t see a bigger vision for her life.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite numerous individual programs and clinicians, there is no systematic, streamlined approach to mental health support in Ukraine, and preventive measures remain fragmented. \u201cFundraising is challenging, especially with USAID cuts,\u201d Timtchenko says. \u201cYou might secure a six-month or twelve-month project, but once funding ends, there\u2019s no guarantee of continuation.\u201d<\/p>\n The mental health professionals I interviewed struggle to answer what progress in therapy looks like under wartime conditions. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to speak of a breakthrough when you\u2019re having Zoom calls with clients being shelled by Shaheds [Russian drones] while you work by candlelight,\u201d the psychotherapist from Lviv told me. \u201cA breakthrough is when a person manages to attend a session and recount how they survived the night.\u201d<\/p>\n Natalia measures success differently: She says it\u2019s when people start to imagine an ordinary future that she knows they are capable of healing. \u201cIt\u2019s cheesy to say, but it\u2019s true: Life persists regardless. We keep living, breathing, noticing spring has arrived. Healing has already begun.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Stigma around mental health care…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[704,318,158,603,693,4495,10900,10899,26,3743,314],"class_list":["post-30270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-conflict","tag-horizontal","tag-kyiv","tag-people","tag-photography","tag-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-2022-2026","tag-shelling-attack","tag-subway-station","tag-ukraine","tag-violence","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"People](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/72OGBWM5K5ADDIUE46SE3TTPHI.jpg\")
People took shelter at a metro station during a Russian missile strike on Kyiv in July.OLEKSII FILIPPOV\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n![\"Relatives](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/WS7SF3TBHFCAHDMTNVOOL55YVM.jpg\")
Relatives of family members who were killed in a missile strike in July mourned during a funeral ceremony in Kryvyi Rig, Ukraine.SERHII OKUNEV\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n