In mid-June, Ukraine’s psychological aid completed its training of the first responders to emergency situations in crisis. The ongoing six-month project includes a five-day course consisting of 300 participants. It aims to develop skills of the normal citizens in critical situations. This training was based on the applications of emergency psychology, a growing field of psychology.
Emergency Psychology-A significant approach to crisis
Emergency psychology also known as disaster or crisis psychology aims and understanding the physical, and emotional needs of people during or after crises, or disasters. It aims to provide care and support to people who have witnessed traumatic events in calamities in the form of interventions for their mental well-being.
The thing that makes it different is its approach. Unlike other forms of psychological interventions that create a safe and comfortable environment, emergency psychologies are used in critical situations and hence its training requires working in actual critical situations.
In Ukraine, this training intervention used to take place in shelters, hospitals, emergency wards, etc where there is an urgent need for care. Ukraine has opted for this method to prepare more and more civilians to provide care and assistance to themselves and others and ukraine has been a battleground for the past 1 and half years when Russian troops invaded the country in February 2022. It causes critical damage to the country’s lives and assets.
The trained personnel works closely with medical professionals and with the victims of an attack. Many learners stated that the training is a difficult assignment because it entails handling terrible crises like deaths. It was important to know how to handle a person who is facing stress by seeing such distressing things.
The assistance to the victims of the Dam-explosion, Kherson
The training comes under HromadaHub an NGO group in Chernivsti, Ukraine also, It is led by expert emergency psychologist Melinda Endefry, who says the first important thing during a time of crisis is to bring a person’s state of mind back to the present in order to calm them down and allow them to understand the situation first. The first number of responders acted in the city of Kherson. Russian troops attacked Kahkhovka on 6 June, causing a dam explosion and resulting in the recent flooding.
The NGO group recently provided relief in Kherson under their project named Food4Body, Food4Soul. It aimed at providing the necessary psychological support and necessary aid to the victims of the flood.
