Media: 80% of Ukrainian children suffer from some form of PTSD
Kyiv • UNN
According to Beyond Conflict, 80 percent of Ukrainian children have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. WHO reports that about 10 million Ukrainians are at risk of mental health problems.
According to the charity organization Beyond Conflict 80% of Ukrainian children suffer from some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. This UNN reports with reference to ITV News.
Beyond Conflict , a charity providing mental health support to victims of war.
“In June this year, Beyond Conflict co-hosted an international panel event on the impact of war on children's mental health, at which an expert from the Ukrainian PTSD task force said that 80% of Ukrainian children suffer from some form of PTSD,” ITV News quoted a spokesperson for the organization as saying.
PTSD can manifest in symptoms ranging from panic attacks and depression to self-harm and suicidal thoughts.
“These statistics are both horrifying and alarming, but sadly not surprising,” said Edna Fernandez, the charity's founder and executive director.
In the ITV News article, the authors remind that according to the World Health Organization (WHO), about 10 million people in Ukraine are already at risk of mental health problems, the severity of which varies from mild to severe. And according to the latest official studies, about 44% of children show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.
According to data from the Ukrainian Ministry of Health released last week, in the first seven months of 2024, about 300,000 Ukrainians went to primary care doctors with complaints of mental health problems.
From January through July, about 276,926 patients received medical care under the “Support and Treatment of Adults and Children with Mental Disorders in Primary Care” package, of which 42,458 were children under the age of 17.
The most common complaints and diagnoses were: feeling anxious, nervous, or tense (117,037 patients); sleep disturbances (76,548 patients); depression (16,170 patients); and memory impairment (10,274 patients).
