About 15 million Ukrainians may need psychological help after the war, Oleksandra Mashkevych, director of the Health Ministry’s Medical Services Department, forecasts.
“According to our tentative calculations, about 15 million citizens will need psychological help and psychosocial support,” she said on the air of the National Telethon on Thursday.
Mashkevich noted that different groups of population will need such assistance, including children, veterans, servicemen, their families, returnees from captivity and others.
She recalled that for psychological assistance under the initiative of the first lady of Ukraine Elena Zelenskaya, the Ministry of Health has developed a project to provide such assistance at the primary level of medical care.
“The state has already trained about 10 thousand primary care doctors. They have received special training from the WHO and the Ministry of Health and already have skills in primary psychological care. Any person who experiences anxiety, some changes in his behavior and feels that he needs help, can go to these doctors and undergo a mental health screening to identify deeper problems and respond in time,” she said.
At the same time, the DHS spokeswoman added that a patient can go to a family physician for such help.
“We’re talking about additional skills specifically for doctors who received additional training during the war and gained skills that they, unfortunately, could not get when they were studying in medical schools,” she said.
