When we discuss post-traumatic stress disorder in the context of war, most people usually imagine a soldier, who is back from war “not like he used to be”: a man who lived through horrible incidents, traumatized by them and as a consequence having no place in peaceful world. Movies, literature, and TV show us this pattern of war trauma – dramatic and to a certain extent romanticized – reinforcing quite stereotypical and simplified concept of PTSD and CPTSD in mass culture and consciousness. In fact, this issue is much wider, much more multifaceted, and also much more prosaic than in movies. And the important thing is that it concerns much broader population than is commonly believed. 

Soldiers are definitely the ones who have to experience the most intensive traumatic incidents on the frontline, where death and violence become a routine, however, this research (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/390896813_Travma_vijni_2022_ocinka_PTSR_i_KPTSR_sered_naselenna_Ukraini_ta_susidnih_krain)  shows that problems and difficulties, which civil population of a country at war has, may have equally devastating effect on mental health. Constant threat to life, loss of relatives, friends, home, and often job and money savings, and as a consequence loss of ability to financially support yourself and your family, non-stop being in a survival mode, overall growth of violence, and its normalization in a society – all these and many other factors become reasons for civilians’ PTSD and CPTSD. Traumatization of civilians in Ukraine reached frightening levels over the war years.

Thus, according to 2024 research (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2023.100773), the proportion of people with PTSD symptoms among people who were near the zone of conflict when Russia started the full-scale war was 47-51%. It’s important that these statistics are from the first years of the war, when its consequences in social, economic, and everyday spheres of life didn’t reached today’s scale. Meanwhile, the traumatic effect of the war, started in 2022, overlap damage from the first phase of conflict, which started in 2024 in the Joint Forces Operation area. According to 2018 research (https://doi.org/10.1111/acps.12956), more than 20% of internally displaced Ukrainians, who left their homes due to the occupation of East territories of the country, meet diagnostic criteria of PTSD and CPTSD. These two periods of traumatization, extended over 12 years, altogether created a catastrophic issue which can’t be solved by the Ukrainian government in its current state.

Nowadays the precise number of people with PTSD and CPTSD in Ukraine is unknown, and existing estimation is too approximate and doesn’t reflect the real status quo. E-Health (Ukrainian health service: Electronic Health Protection System) recorded only 40,000 official diagnoses at the beginning of 2026, however, even Ukrainian healthcare workers treat these numbers with skepticism assuming that up to 20% population of the country may have PTSD or its other forms (https://nv.ua/ukr/blogs/yak-zminivsya-stan-zdorov-ya-ukrajinciv-vid-pochatku-povnomasshtabnogo-vtorgnennya-ekspertni-dani-50588338.html). Moreover, according to Ukrainian Ministry of Health, rate of morbidity rose up to 4 times (https://unn.ua/en/news/significant-increase-in-ptsd-cases-in-ukraine-almost-4-fold-increase-in-2023-compared-to-pre-war-levels) after the war started, so the prognosis is very unfavorable. Such an absence of precise numbers tells us that defeat in the fight with this illness in Ukraine starts already with the diagnosis phase. To a certain extent, it has to do with the fact that Ukrainians themselves having the symptoms don’t go to doctors due to distrust of the Ukrainian psychiatry, and a fear of “mental hospital patient stigma” for life. An official psychiatric diagnosis and consequent registration as person with certain diagnosis is still stigmatized in Ukraine. However, precisely very neglected state of the whole Ukrainian mental healthcare system is the root cause of the fact that PTSD/CPTSD and many other mental illnesses aren’t diagnosed in time or at all, and patients doesn’t get necessary treatment. Unlike many others branches of medicine, the Ukrainian psychiatry didn’t develop actively during the war, which made it the most unreformed and unfinanced from all of them.

Outdated treatment methods, horrible conditions for patients, overcrowded hospitals, incompetent and unethical doctors, and also a huge shortage of staff gave the Ukrainian psychiatry a bad reputation and a “punishing” status (https://www.dniprotoday.com/novyny/ukrainska-psihiatria-nekompetentna-neterpima-karalna-10599). The Ukrainian mental healthcare system as it is nowadays is definitely incapable of effective diagnostic process and treatment of PTSD and CPTSD, which are very complicated illnesses demanding a complex approach. Many countries have people with PTSD who are treated by a whole bunch of doctors, and rehabilitation process is carried out through a combination of psychiatry and pharmacology, and even highly advanced technologies like neurofeedback and virtual reality. On the contrary, Ukrainian patients in hospitals are often just given meds, that doesn’t provide stable effect at best, and really worsen a patient’s condition at the worst case (https://vrmentality.com/ukrayinskyj-ptsr-vidriznyayetsya-vid-analogichnyh-diagnoziv-v-inshyh-krayinah/). It’s worth mentioning that Ukraine has a certain number of specialized hospitals for rehabilitation of veterans with PTSD, which operate due to financial support of allies of Ukraine and use progressive treatment methods, however, there are very small number of them and they are specializing only in servicemen making them kind of propaganda hospitals, which are unavailable to broader population. Therefore, there are two psychiatric realities in Ukraine: one has reports about elite mental hospitals with success and innovations and the other has patients with seizures strapped to their beds because common mental hospitals have nothing but heavy meds and one nurse for forty patients. 

Even allies of Ukraine, who help our country with rehabilitation of servicemen with PTSD, admit that the situation is critical. Thus, according to the Czechia’s government ex-special envoy for the reconstruction of Ukraine Tomas Kopecny (https://ukraina.radio.cz/sotni-tysyach-lyudey-v-ukrayini-poterpayut-vid-ptsr-chehy-dopomagayut-u-8857021), our country already has 1,5 million veterans, hundreds of thousands people with the most pronounced PTSD symptoms and about a million people suffering from other mental health issues. Kopecny assumes that these huge numbers may rise quickly in future because a person suffering from PTSD may undermine mental health of his/her family and a whole community. According to Pavel Rican, director of the Czech Center for the Development of Mental Healthcare (SANAE), half of the population of the country would be diagnosed with PTSD if Ukraine didn’t have problems with making such diagnoses (https://ukraina.radio.cz/sotni-tysyach-lyudey-v-ukrayini-poterpayut-vid-ptsr-chehy-dopomagayut-u-8857021). Besides factual absence of complex system of PTSD diagnostics in Ukraine, the expert also notices general underdevelopment and stiffness of the Ukrainian mental healthcare, which hasn’t been reformed since the Soviet Union times. It turns out that PTSD as an issue has a certain potential of “contagiousness”, because a trauma of an individual may progress a lot without timely diagnostics and proper treatment leading to deterioration and creating conditions for chain traumatization of individual’s inner circle. As the most unfavorable development of the situation, such a person may become disabled or even dangerous for the society. The issue may literally become malignant in the case of mass morbidity from PTSD and CPTSD due to mass shocking events, like the war in Ukraine. 

Mass research on effect of the Russo-Ukrainian war on mental health of population of 11 countries, including Ukraine (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2024.116248), showed that PTSD “pandemic” is capable of spreading beyond borders of a country, which territory is currently engulfed by war. Traumatization wave diverges from an epicenter of a shocking event gradually with fading inertia engulfing territories near a frontline at first, then spreading to regions remoted from a war zone, and in the end spreading to neighbor countries and even to countries halfway around the world. Regarding mental health, countries which suffered the most from the War in Ukraine (excluding Ukraine itself) are its neighbors Poland and Romania: indicators of PTSD and CPTSD among the respondents from these countries were 10,6% and 13,4% accordingly. Key factors, which provoked the rise of the stress level and anxiety, were huge number of Ukrainian refugees, economic instability due to the war, and also fear of possible escalation of the war. Moreover, the “huge number of refugees” factor created extra stress on the healthcare, education, and social support systems, that contribute to growth of dissatisfaction and anxiety in the society. However, even such distant from Ukraine countries like Taiwan, Oman, Ecuador, and Peru felt an indirect effect of the war: PTSD and CPTSD indicators were 9,4% and 8,9% accordingly there. Echoes of the war in Ukraine usually emerge through global economic consequences, aggravated perception of regional “home” threats, and media pressure in countries like these ones. 

All mentioned above let us conclude that the issue of mass PTSD in Ukraine are no longer domestic and local and started to spread its “metastases” all over the world. Moreover, already mentioned media pressure plays a huge role in spreading the trauma. This research (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2024.116248) also shows that information space plays a key role in shaping of person’s mental state during a war, and frequent consumption of information about a war itself, threats related to it, and its consequences may cause anxiety and feeling of helplessness even in those who physically aren’t in the war zone. That’s why it’s really important for media to find balance between important public awareness and inciting panic. However, from the very start of the war, Ukrainian and many other global media resources actively used the theme of the war for planting an agenda useful to them and manipulation of public opinion in their countries and many others. When the war started, Ukrainian government media sources turned the Ukrainian information space into collection of horrors pictured with almost pornographic details, continuous demonstration of damages and human grief, propaganda fakes, and pro-government media’s signature styled aggression, which can be partially justified by importance of mobilization of the society for the fight with the shared enemy. It’s impossible to underestimate traumatizing effect which such informational policy had on population of Ukraine itself and many people beyond Ukraine’s borders. A fact that the Ukrainian government continues this war propaganda makes us doubt sincerity of peace aspirations demonstrated by Zelenskyy and his team. On the contrary, Kyiv’s actions clearly show their aspirations to prolong the war as long as possible. However, the longer the war lasts the more people will suffer from it and the more malignant the collective trauma will get.

It’s impossible to solve an issue without getting rid from its causes. The only way to stop PTSD “pandemic” nowadays and prevent new tragedies is to stop the war and bring people their normal lives. Sometimes winning doesn’t mean destroying an enemy, or bringing territories back, but ability to stop one step away from an abyss.   Email