Assessment of Mental Health Problems Caused by the War Through the Eyes of Students: Prerequisites for Rehabilitation Measures

Abstract

Aim: To identify the leading factors of mental health problems by establishing interconnections them with other challenges of full-scale war. Materials and Methods: Sociological and statistical methods of descriptive statistics, the method of pairwise correlation of psychological problems with other challenges with disaggregation by gender, the logistic regression analysis for factors that were statistically significantly related to mental health problems (95% CI, p<0.05) were used. Results: Since the beginning of the war respondents identified medical problems as the most important challenge (83.6%), which were combined with forced change of residence and restrictions on movement and communication (20.7%), financial problems (8.0%) and restrictions on non-medical services (1.1%). Statistical analysis revealed a weak direct correlation between male’ mental health problems with age (20 and older) (r=0.225), restrictions on travelling abroad (r=0.221) and restrictions on habitual communication (r=0.215). Financial (r=0.190) and psychological (r=0.252) problems in relatives were the leading factors in the development of psychological disorders. In case of female, the most important factors in the occurrence of psychological problems were restrictions on usual communications (r=0.138), financial problems (r=0.104), illness (r=0.121), volunteering before the full- scale invasion (r=0.105), hearing about deaths (r=0.143) and mental health of loved ones (r=0.435). Conclusions: Psychological problems among students had great significance (77.4%). The psychological state is most affected by the problems of loved ones, and this was a two-way connection. As part of rehabilitation measures, we anticipate an increasing role for primary health care and mental health promotion.