Why Ukraine refugees are struggling with survivor's guilt

Ukrainian refugee Lana Lisetska has forgiven herself for “being saved” and is rebuilding her life thanks to a programme that tackles the often-overlooked mental health struggles of people fleeing the war. “For the first few months I was suffering from what they call ‘Survivor Syndrome’,” said Lisetska, who fled to neighbouring Moldova with her seven-year-son just after the outbreak of the war more than a year ago. “You know you are safe but inside you have this feeling of guilt, that you have betrayed your country and your parents.” Lisetska, 32, left her husband and her friends behind to get her son to safety and is now living at a Moldovan refugee centre at Nisporeni close to the border with Romania. But she never took off her little heart pendant in the blue and yellow colours of her homeland. She would burst into tears in the strangest of times and places, even when she was at the hairdresser. “There were people in Mariupol and in Bucha who had nothing to eat then” and here she was getting her hair cut, she remembered thinking.

But the “most terrible thing is when you learn to live with that” as if it were normal, she told AFP.

But thanks to help from psychologists from Doctors of the World, Lisetska has got a job with a company handling hotel reservations. You Suppress A Lot Moldavia, which like neighbouring Ukraine was once part of the Soviet Union, is hosting more than 100,000 Ukrainian refugees – a major challenge for a poor country of only 2.6 million people. It has got support from some 40 major humanitarian organisations including Doctors of the World, which has made refugees’ mental health problems a priority. “It’s a critical area where we can provide support,” Liz Devine, its American-born general coordinator there told AFP. “The thing about mental health as it doesn’t always come out at first… It’s kind of panic and fear in the early days,” she added. “You can suppress a lot and these issues can manifest themselves in different ways over the course of time.” Devine said 86 percent of Ukrainian refugees in Moldova are women and children.

“That’s an incredibly high ratio compared to what you’d find in other refugee” situations.

“The husbands, the brothers and the sons remain in Ukraine either to fight or to provide other support” for the war effort. So feelings of being isolated and all alone are common. Even surrounded by pictures of her family back in Ukraine, Elena Bavyko felt that acutely. The photos are also a reminder of her ultimate goal – to return home. If she is doing better now, it is down to the psychological support she has received, she believed. Art Therapy “I discovered an absolutely new method in group sessions, where we could cry and talk about our problems together,” the 23-year-old said. “When you hear someone else’s story, you understand that you are not alone in this, and it becomes easier,” she added. Bavyko has since begun helping other Ukrainians who have fled with the NGO Acted. Like Larissa Demcenco, a lawyer from Odesa who is now living in the Moldovan capital Chisinau with her 20-year-old daughter, she also found art therapy very useful. “You paint and try to visualise your dreams,” said Demcenco, who has now got a job working with children. “Our mission is now to go back to Ukraine and use these techniques with those who had stayed on and suffered there.” Most of the 686,000 Ukrainians who poured over the border into Moldova thought their stay there would be brief. Many moved on to other countries, or went home.

But for those with no choice but to stay, the war dragging on has thrown up new problems.

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Doctors of the World said many are “exhausted by not being able to predict what the future might bring”, which for the most vulnerable can lead to “an endemic state of stress”. It is also trying to support overstretched frontline workers dealing with refugees using a programme called “Help the helpers” it developed in Lebanon. “It is hard to watch what Ukrainian refugees are going through,” said Moldovan Nadia Pascaru Botnaru, 41, the local head of the People In Need organisation. “We ourselves are also living under the threat” of a Russian invasion. “You say to yourself, ‘Maybe it will be us next.’” With inputs from agencies