The international conference “Psychosocial Rehabilitation of the Victims and IDPs from the ATO zone” took place in the Feldman Ecopark Centre of Psychosocial Rehabilitation of Children and Adolescents.
The conference was organized by the International Charitable Foundation of Oleksandr Feldman, the National League of Psychotherapy, Psychosomatics and Medical Psychology of Ukraine, and the Kharkiv Medical Academy of Post-graduate Education (KhMAPE) under the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.
Perhaps, each of us feels the gain of mental and physical strengths and the harmony with the surrounding world after the contact with the nature. The contact with animals helps people to get rid of aggression, to become kinder, and this general favorable mood influences our feelings and health.
Even in the past, the physician-scientist noticed that the contact with the nature helps people to get rid of such mental illnesses as depression, stress and alarm conditions. As for children with congenital diseases and with special physical needs, they adapt themselves to life in the society faster with the help of special treatment procedures and programmes connected with the outdoor contact with animals. All these things were united and named “ecotherapy.”
“So, we decided to open the Centre of Psychosocial Rehabilitation of Children and Adolescents in the Feldman Ecopark,” the chairman of the Board of Founders of the AVEC and Co. Concern Borys Yakovlevych Feldman told opening the Conference. “Only outdoor, both adults and children feel that every living thing on Earth is the one big family, and that we all need love, friendship and mutual support. But the main thing is the health of children. The contact with animals favourably influences the kids, and they find joy and the meaning of life.”
“Ecotherapy is a fundamentally new concept in medicine. Instead of the medicinal and the other traditional methods of treatment, it prefers the complex use of natural factors, cultural environment, and creativity for the creation of therapeutic climate, which favourably influences the patients. Animal-assisted therapy, landscape therapy, horticultural therapy, art therapy and other types of treatment are used in various countries for a long time. We’ve managed to unite these directions in one synthetic method, and reached certain results,” the chief specialist of the Ministry of Health in the fields of specialization “Medical psychology” and “Psychotherapy,” the head of the Psychotherapy department in the Kharkiv Medical Academy of Post-graduate Education, Doctor of Medical Science, professor Borys Mykhailov tells.
The scientist summarized the work of the Feldman Ecopark Centre of Psychosocial Rehabilitation of Children and Adolescents in the book “Ecotherapy,” which was published just before the Conference.
New children of war
According to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), almost 40 percent of children aged 7-12 and the majority of teenagers aged 13-18 in Donetsk oblast became the direct witnesses of the events connected with the war, the battles or the armed conflicts, they saw killed and seriously wounded people, they saw beating of acquaintances and close people, they were directly at gunpoint and felt fear and terror.
“Few years ago, when the Centre was planned and prepared for launch, we couldn’t even think that we will hold the conference devoted to the topic of rehabilitation of children, who became the victims and the IDPs from the ATO zone,” the director of the International Charitable Foundation of Oleksandr Feldman Maksym Vodka says. “Unfortunately, the misfortune came to our country: the war, the great amount of human distress, the IDPs, the wounded, the combatants. Under these conditions, ecotherapy appeared to be especially needed. As a physician, I know that it is possible to suture the wound and it closes up in 10 days, it is possible to replace a lost extremity with an artificial limb, but the emotional wounds are healed for a very long time, and sometimes even leave the mark in souls forever.”
The unstable social and economic situation in the country generally affects mental health of children and adolescents. Thus, according to the Kharkiv Institute of Children and Adolescents Health Care, “the borderline personality disorders of schoolchildren were observed in 40.3 percent of cases. 35 percent of schoolchildren had the negative psychoemotional feelings. 43.5 percent of children had low control of aggression. One in five children had low level of learning activity. A high anxiety level was peculiar to one third of children. Suicidal behaviour steadily grows.” It should be noted that according to the specialists, the risks of the development of mental deviations among schoolchildren include “stressful tactics of authoritarian pedagogy.”
Today, based on the Feldman Ecopark, the physicians and psychologists actively develop the new and improve the traditional models of medical and psychological rehabilitation of children with mental disorders. These methods, demonstrated to the participants of the Conference, include play therapy and animal-assisted therapy. The animal-assisted therapy is aimed at the development of a child under the conditions of ecosystem and humane treatment of the animal world.
When the combatants return…
The head of the army medical department of the National Guard of Ukraine Oleh Mykhailyk is convinced that the discussed problem is very urgent for combat medics. He demonstrated the statistics of the dramatic increase of the number of persons with the pathology of psychogenic origin among both the draftees and the contract soldiers.
It is natural that if the morbidity rate increases, the number of discharges from the Armed Forces increases as well. The situation improves in 2016. It may be applied to the critical processes, but in case of remote processes and consequences, this problem will only worsen, Oleh Mykhailyk predicts.
According to the statistics of different wars and armies, the psychiatric losses during military actions account for 6.6-12.7 percent of the army strength, and up to 30 percent of total number of sanitary losses. Approximately 15-20 percent of the staff has a combating stress response in different periods of military actions. However, depending on the specific nature of military actions, these figures may be higher.
The range of authors notes that different forms of lingering mental disorders develop long after the war. They include phobias, anxiety and depressive disorders, which may last during a day or during weeks, months or even years. The cases of violence, problems in family relations and social contacts are observed among the war veterans. For example, the number of suicides among the Vietnam War veterans in the USA considerably exceeds the number of the victims of this war. The similar situation is observed in Croatia.
The senior psychiatrist, Candidate of Medicine Valentyna Mazhbits told about the results of the examination of the unit of the National Guard of Ukraine consisting of the patriotic volunteers who were the participants of the military actions in 2014-2016, and were among the protesters at Euromaidan. They are the soldiers aged 19-58. Approximately half of them obtained higher education. All of them underwent the complex medical examination and the tests applying the methods aimed at the study of emotional, volitional and cognitive conditions. It has been found that one in five soldiers of this unit needs medical and psychological rehabilitation.
Posttraumatic stress disorder is the most frequent disorder among the combatants.
375 combatants underwent the psychosocial rehabilitation arranged jointly by the Feldman Ecopark Centre of Psychosocial Rehabilitation of Children and Adolescents, the Psychotherapy department in the Kharkiv Medical Academy of Post-graduate Education and the health center “Berezivski Mineralni Vody” in 2015-2016. These complex methods demonstrated positive results.
“Unfortunately, under the current conditions, we predict the increase of the number of persons subject to emotional stress factors, who, accordingly, require our professional assistance,” professor Borys Mykhailov emphasizes. “In 2005, Ukraine joined the Mental Health Declaration for Europe and the European Mental Health Action Plan. The European Office of the World Health Organization emphasized at Helsinki Conference that the population’s mental health and well-being care should be the priority, and therefore, the general doctrine of health care changed from the merely medical curative effect to the highest possible level of social functioning and quality of life. It is not a declaration made for effect. It is our ultimate aim today and the efficiency criterion for our professional actions. In this regard, the long-term cooperation with the Feldman Ecopark led us to the concept of ecotherapy as a complex of therapeutic, rehabilitation and preventive measures based on a person’s immersion in the natural habitat.”
Reference
Ecotherapy is a fundamentally new concept in medicine. Instead of the medicinal and the other traditional methods of treatment, it prefers the complex use of natural factors, cultural environment, and creativity for the creation of therapeutic climate, which favourably influences the patients.
Olena Zelenina.
