Liudmyla Lobok, UETS 3rd-year student of Psychology, The Church of Christ, Kropyvnytskyi city
“When the Russians entered Kherson, we were very worried about our children. I have a daughter, Daryna, who is 14 years old. Families with teenage girls usually tried to take them out of the city because violence was happening all around. My mother has a private house just outside Kherson, so we took Daryna and went there. At that time, Daryna was studying online. And here we are sitting in the morning, and I see through the window that Russian soldiers are coming across the field to our village – they are going in a line and cleaning everything on the way so that no one can escape. At once, I grabbed Dasha – I don’t even know where I had so much strength – and together with our neighbor and her children, we just ran to the river…We dug a hole on the shore and spent the night there to protect our children. And then we decided to leave… A lot of people gathered at that checkpoint from Kherson. But they would be letting out of the city very few. They just mocked people…We were among the last 30 cars allowed to leave this checkpoint. As soon as they let us pass, they fired multiple Grad rockets at us…It was the second time that we somehow managed to survive…”
This is a story about one of many families whom Liudmyla Lobok, a 3rd-year student of the Practical Psychology program at UETS, has served since the beginning of the war. “Seeing people broken by the war is what hurts the most…” says Liudmyla. She faces such stories of human grief every day in her ministry. In order to help such people, she and her husband, together with a group of volunteers, organized a group of social and psychological support in the city of Kropyvnytskyi.
“People in my group do not sleep. They have many acquired diseases resulting from stress – diabetes, enuresis, and aggressive oncology. These are examples of people who did not receive psychological support in time and didn’t live through the traumatic event ecologically. Unfortunately, these people get very sick,” Liudmyla says.
She notes that this problem will be even more urgent and more acute after the end of the war. “We will live in a very traumatized society… next to those boys and girls who have seen violence against their mothers and loved ones, next to traumatized people who did not receive timely psychological support. There will be people who will return from the front with traumas, both psychological and physical. There will be families where children and women are codependent on their fathers’ and husbands’ PTSD. In general, we, as a society, will have the challenge of learning to live in a traumatized society. Therefore, now it is extremely necessary for us to receive an appropriate psychological education,” emphasizes Liudmyla.
“Unfortunately, now is the time when there are not enough psychologists for everyone, and the need is immense” – says Liudmyla. Therefore, it is crucial to develop more programs to train specialists who are able to provide qualified psychological assistance to people affected by war in Ukraine.