Ukraine war worsening mental health problems elsewhere in Europe, study suggests

European nations have been urged to ‘prepare to meet the increased demand for care’, Andy Gregory reports

Vladimir Putin launched his country’s war on Ukraine on 24 February (Alexander Nemenov/Pool Photo via AP)

Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is taking a toll on people’s mental health “far beyond the borders” of the nations directly involved, new research suggests.

A new study of Danish patients with mental health conditions has found that many experienced a worsening of symptoms “which appear to be related to the war” launched by Russia against its neighbour on 24 February.

With thousands having lost their lives since the war began and nearly 13 million people having been forced to flee their homes, around half of them to other countries, the researchers from Aarhus University stressed that any overall negative impact elsewhere “will be nothing compared to what the Ukrainian population is experiencing”.

But they pointed to previous studies, also relating to Denmark, which highlighted the psychological effect that war and terrorism can have upon “individuals remotely distanced from these events” – and described finding evidence of the same pattern with regards to Ukraine.

Given the scale and the media coverage of the war in Ukraine, the researchers said they believe it “more likely than unlikely” that their findings in Danish patients will also translate to the populations of other European countries.

The peer-reviewed study, which will be published in the Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica journal, serves “as an early warning sign of the potential width of the negative mental health impact from the war, which will, inevitably, hit the Ukrainian population the hardest”, they said.

As a result, the researchers warned that mental health and psychiatric services in European countries “must prepare to meet the increased demand for care as a consequence of the war in Ukraine”.

For the study, the researchers analysed more than 567,000 clinical notes from medical records at psychiatric hospitals in the central Denmark region between 1 January and 8 March, searching for those containing the word, “Ukraine”.

Immediately after Russia’s invasion, they observed a “sharp increase” in the number of clinical notes referring to Ukraine, according to the study’s co-author, Professor Søren Dinesen Østergaard, of Aarhus University.

Some 62 per cent of these notes described patients who had experienced “a worsening of anxiety, post-traumatic stress, delusions or hallucinations, which appear to be related to the war”, Prof Østergaard said.

While Prof Østergaard acknowledged that it is difficult to document a causal relationship between the Ukraine war and patients’ symptom levels, he said that “the clear temporal association between the invasion and the increase in the clinical notes describing symptom deterioration suggests that we have identified a real effect”.

In previous studies, Prof Østergaard and others have documented an increase in the number of contacts with psychiatric hospitals in Denmark due to stress and adjustment disorders in the periods following the 9/11 attacks, and after those by far-right terrorist Anders Breivik in Oslo and Utoya.

“I think that the same mechanisms are at play in the current situation. It therefore appears that war and terrorism have negative psychological consequences far beyond the borders of the countries that are directly affected,” said Prof Østergaard.

He said the new study’s results suggest “that the war in Ukraine probably has secondary effects that require attention”, adding: “Specifically, in the psychiatric services, we must be aware of the possibility that some of our patients may be very negatively affected by the situation.

“Many of our patients were already under substantial pressure prior to the war due to the Covid-19 pandemic and may therefore be extra sensitive at the moment.”

He added: “It’s important to keep in mind that the negative psychological impact we experience in Denmark is nothing compared to what the Ukrainian population is experiencing – including the Ukrainians who have fled the war.”

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