People born at the time of the Chornobyl disaster are wary about the future
A social and psychological Chornobyl rehabilitation center opened recently in Boyarka in line with the UN Chornobyl Program and in collaboration with the Ukrainian Emergency Management Ministry. Previously, the notion of the medical rehabilitation of Chornobyl victims implied only man’s somatic status, totally ignoring the mental factor. Meanwhile a recent international conference on Medical Consequences of the Chornobyl Disaster: A Summary of Fifteen Years of Studies made public monitoring findings pointing to not only mental disorders found in rescue and repair workers and persons living in the contaminated area, but also to the psychological specifics of those people. High anxiety, lack of confidence of one’s own resources, and the so-called victim syndrome were their identifying characteristic features.
Regrettably, the trace of Chornobyl is detected in the younger generation. Numerous studies show that children’s psychological and social problems increase literally by the day. Some researchers assume that such malfunctions are an additional risk factor in terms of physical impairments, particularly thyroid morbidity. Studies initiated by USAID point to an average of 15% emotionally disturbed children and 50% with worry and depression. In the West, this ratio does not exceed 5-7%. Such findings drew special expert attention to the psychological factor of the Chornobyl rescue and repair program. Even before the opening of the Boyarka center similar facilities operated in Ivankiv, Borodianka, and Slavutych. The new center is attached to the Kyiv Oblast Children’s Hospital, so that the young patients, in addition to physical procedures, can be aided by experienced psychologists.
The architects of the center believe that an impaired psyche is one reason for an ailing body, so they actively propagate psychology as a discipline in the health-care system. “The patient must be treated, not the illness,” says USAID’s Olena Radziyevska. Here patients can also receive individual consultations relating to psychology, albeit in especially aggravated cases, because the available personnel does not allow individual consulting for all patients. Mostly, children are enrolled in art and play therapy groups; those with emotional disturbances stemming from family problems undergo family therapy. Staff psychologist Nadiya Demydiuk says their efforts are aimed primarily at adapting the children to hospital life and assuaging their fear of various medical procedures. It is especially difficult to deal with teenagers, she adds, and not because this age is universally recognized as an especially complex period in life. Children born in the year of the Chornobyl disaster actually have no future as a temporal category. Moreover, many see no use in communicating with psychologists, considering them funny farm doctors. Fortunately, this trend subsides with each passing year and sometimes both children and their parents realize the need to turn to a psychotherapist to overcome the post trauma syndrome and resolve various conflicts.
Small children do not mind rehabilitation, they enjoy drawing and role playing games. At the endocrinology ward (in the photo) they are happy to meet with social workers acting as their instructors. Too bad such sessions are possible only while in the hospital, whereas many children need prolonged psychotherapeutic contact and it is practically impossible to find such specialists in the countryside where these children live. As a result, the effectiveness of such sessions is often questionable. According to Vasyl Durdynets, Minister of Emergency Management and Chornobyl Relief, the need to have such institutions is self-evident and perhaps their number will increase with time. Today, many are simply unable to get to such rehabilitation centers, however interested they might be in receiving psychotherapy.
