Psychological well-being of ukrainians at the beginning of the full-scale russian invasion

Kovalenko, A.B., & Yatsenko, A.O. (2022). Psychological well-being of ukrainians at the beginning of the full-scale russian invasion. Український психологічний журнал, 2(18), 91-108. https://doi.org/10.17721/upj.2022.2(18).5

The article examines people's psychological well-being during hostilities at the territory of Ukraine. To perform an empirical study, the whole sample was divided into four groups: active people, passive people, peoples who were displaced to the west of Ukraine, people who went abroad. The performed empirical research revealed that the respondents had mainly an average level of psychological well-being. Gender differences in psychological well-being were determined: men had mostly high or average psychological well-being, women had mostly low one. The age-depending peculiarities of psychological wellbeing were clarified. People aged 18-24 and 25-30 years had mainly an average level of psychological well-being, in contrast to other age categories. Average and high levels of psychological well-being were equally represented in people aged 31-40. As for people aged 41-50 years, they showed medium and low levels of psychological well-being. The youngest study participants, aged 14-17, showed mostly low psychological well-being. Differences in psychological wellbeing depending on places of stay were determined: the respondents who stayed at home mostly had an average level of psychological well-being. In contrast to them, the respondents who left their homes tend to have low psychological well-being. The performed correlation analysis revealed positive correlations of psychological well-being with hardiness, task-solving coping, distraction, helplessness and negative ones with emotion-focused coping, search for social support. Six factors of psychological well-being were determined for the sample in general: “fixation on actively solved problems”, “fixation on own helplessness”, “fixation on negative situations”, “fixation on protective mechanisms”, “avoiding negative situations”, “ability control a situation”. The differences in the factor structure of psychological well-being of those who left their living places and those who remained at home were revealed.