Texas A&M Welcomes Doctors From Ukraine For Mental Health Training

Ukrainian doctor Yuliana Ilina lives and works in the country’s capital Kyiv, far from the front line of the war with Russia. Nevertheless, with Ukrainian casualties estimated at half a million, she describes feeling the loss and pain of her fellow citizens by quoting 17th century English poet John Donne: “No man is an island. … Any man’s death diminishes me.”

The war has displaced millions, and although she’s miles from the worst of the fighting, it still affects daily life for Ilina, her colleagues and patients.

The sustained stresses of war have resulted in a “mental health emergency” for Ukrainians, said Dr. Israel Liberzon, who along with colleagues at the Texas A&M University College of Medicine, has focused efforts on trauma care in the country. Thanks to a $1.4 million Fogarty Grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Liberzon and Dr. Tetiana Nickelsen have traveled to Ukraine, taught and lectured there, and brought mental health professionals from there to Texas for training.

Liberzon and Nickelsen were both born in Ukraine.

“Mental health casualties are often unrecognized and untreated,” said Liberzon, who leads the team of experts. “These issues are chronic and disabling. Ukraine lacks mental health specialists who can provide evidence-based treatments, researchers in the trauma/PTSD field and in implementation science.”

Nickelsen said A&M’s training not only endeavors to teach state-of-the-art trauma care, but implementation science that will examine the effectiveness and dissemination of these treatment approaches in real life in Ukraine.

At launch, program demand was high: Of the 345 applications received, 40 Ukrainian psychologists and psychiatrists were accepted. The five-year project began in earnest with the A&M team’s first visit to Kyiv in May 2023; the first training workshop was in October that same year in Lviv, Ukraine. This summer, Ilina and three other trainees came to the Texas A&M University campus for the program’s U.S. summer session.

The training focuses on evidence-based treatments including prolonged exposure therapy; pharmacotherapy (treatment using medications); cognitive processing therapy; and other exposure-based therapies such as EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing); as well as implementation science.

The program will work to ensure sustainability by introducing training modules into Ukrainian universities’ existing programs, including Kyiv Mohila National Academy and Ukrainian Catholic University, with other schools in talks to join.

Effects Of Mass Violence

It is estimated up to a third of Ukrainians, both civilian and military, might have experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms from the country’s 2014-21 conflict with Russia. Since the 2022 invasion, millions more have been exposed to combat and war-related traumas. Liberzon’s team estimates tens of thousands of Ukraine’s soldiers may develop PTSD as a result of the current conflict.

As a psychiatrist in an inpatient department of a psychiatric hospital, Ilina treats civilians, veterans and active military. “We have a lot of air raid alarms in Kyiv, so we have to go to our shelters. This happens while I’m at work, with patients and colleagues,” she said. “The situation with power is pretty bad — most of the days we have electricity at our homes for only 4 to 5 hours a day.”

Last month, Russia hit the children’s hospital Ohmatdytv in Kyiv with a missile, killing more than 40 people. “It is a great tragedy and also a reminder, that nobody is completely safe, and every moment of life could be the last one,” Ilina said.

Ilina said in the first weeks and months of the full-scale invasion, there were problems with preexisting mental health problems because Ukrainians were forced to leave their homes. They didn’t know where to seek psychiatric help in their new locations, she said, and not everyone had access to their medications.

“But as time passes, we are working more with the consequences of severe psychological trauma — veterans, their family members, deployed soldiers, civilians from the occupied territories, victims of the missile attacks, and so on,” she said.

Ilina, who has returned home from her stay in Aggieland, said her time spent as a trainee in the program was an “amazing” learning opportunity.

“Their strong evidence-based approach adds a lot to my understanding of the PTSD problem,” she said.

A&M Student Support

Aggie students are also lending support to the people of Ukraine. Leading the charge is the Ukrainian Club at TAMU, a student-run organization with the primary goal of spreading awareness about Ukraine and sharing its culture.

President Natalya Kolomiyets says the group has been proud to partner with the Arlene Campbell Humanitarian Foundation (ACHF), a non-profit organization that sends medical supplies to Ukraine. “For example, our famous and very well attended Pysanka (Easter Egg decoration) workshops, 100% of the donations collected there went to ACHF.”

Up next for the students is a concert event called “Homeland from Afar” at Rudder Theatre on the Texas A&M campus, Aug. 28 from 5 to 8 p.m.

Made possible by the Good Bull Foundation, the free concert, open to everyone, is “dedicated to all who were forced to leave their homeland due to war,” and will feature Ukrainian musicians Alex Syedin and Oleksandra Pelitu.

The event will not only “showcase Ukrainian culture and its beauties but also encourage Aggies to embrace their ethnicities and nationalities,” the group stated in a press release. “Events like this bring joy to those students who may feel homesick or disconnected from their homeland and may help them discover a new family away from home.”

Ilina encourages all who read her story to contribute to the betterment of her homeland in any way they can. And as a physician, she says she does her best for her patients: “I can make their lives at least less painful … to become a winner in this uphill battle.”