Self and mutual assistance for veterans and volunteers for overcoming post-traumatic stress states during return to a peaceful life
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Abstract
Actuality. The return of veterans to a peaceful life is an important and difficult issue for various countries with experience in hostilities. In Ukraine, this problem is complicated by the hybrid nature of the war; the need to involve a large group of civilians – volunteers, including a significant number of women, in the adequate fight against Russian aggression – and so on.
The aim of the study is to determine the effectiveness of veterans and volunteers to acquire knowledge and skills of self-help and mutual assistance in coping with post-traumatic stress states by means of body-oriented and respiratory psychotechnologies in restoring their psychological well-being.
Methods and methodology. 20 participants of the mutual assistance training were studied: 8 men-veterans and 12 women-volunteers, 10 of whom are also members of veterans’ families. The main research methods were: included observation, analysis of questions and answers of participants, questionnaires.
Results. It is noted that for some participants in the study of hybrid war and peace, the spread of coronavirus infection are stimuli for personal growth, but for a large part of them, on the contrary, they cause the actualization of post-traumatic stress. The survey of participants immediately after the training showed a high self-assessment of the effectiveness of mastering their psychotechnologies to restore psychological well-being when returning to a peaceful life: 100% reported mastering psychotechnologies self-help, 85% – mutual aid technologies, 80% expressed desire to gain additional knowledge and skills. However, the re-survey, in which only 9 participants took part, showed a decrease in the activity of the participants’ use of acquired skills compared to the data of the first measurement.
Conclusions and prospects for further research. It is noted that in order to transform the skills acquired during the training of self-help and mutual assistance in restoring psychological well-being into practice, it is necessary to form joint groups of mutual assistance of training participants.
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References
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