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Does escaping a war zone feel worse than being there? War and coping by Ukrainian civilians in Ukraine and Poland

Palace, M, Szwejka, L, Kossowska, M, May, B, Tretyakova, Y, Karolczak, A, Strojny, P, Gurbisz, D, Besta, T, Cherkas, N, Krzywosz-Rynkiewicz, B, Lee, S, Bokszczanin, A, Adams-Tukiendorf, M, Jiang, W and Suhirthi, A Does escaping a war zone feel worse than being there? War and coping by Ukrainian civilians in Ukraine and Poland. Psychological Trauma. ISSN 1942-9681 (Accepted)

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Abstract

Objective: While the factors facilitating and compromising stress-coping by civilians in an active war zone and those who have fled it are critical to the experiences of trauma, they are under-explored, which the current paper aims to address. Method: Between March 23rd and May 15th of 2023, 122 Ukraine-based and 132 Poland-based Ukrainian participants completed a survey measuring different aspects of trauma, social beliefs and coping. Results: Compared to the war zone civilians, the Poland-based refugees scored significantly higher in terms of general war repercussions, peritraumatic experiences, PTSD symptoms, loneliness, anxiety about the loved ones and chemical/biological/missile/drone attack anxiety. While no differences between them were found in terms of other factors, regression and SEM analyses suggests that the general well-being was compromised in both samples by lower sensation-seeking, higher loneliness, higher fantasy-proneness, lower expected support from the West, and higher expected Chinese and Iranian support for Russia. Religiosity did not play a role. Conclusions: While the role of perceived social support (at the levels of friends and family) turned out to be limited, the (broader) expected support (from the West) played a more significant role. Additionally, our exploratory Civilian War Trauma Structural Equation Model suggests that anxiety interacts with the individual's overall vulnerability, thus exacerbating the psychological impact of war.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: ©American Psychological Association, 2025. This paper is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the authoritative document published in the APA journal.
Uncontrolled Keywords: 1701 Psychology; 5201 Applied and developmental psychology; 5202 Biological psychology; 5203 Clinical and health psychology
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Divisions: Psychology (from Sep 2019)
Publisher: American Psychological Association
SWORD Depositor: A Symplectic
Date Deposited: 25 Mar 2025 10:11
Last Modified: 25 Mar 2025 10:15
URI: https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/25983
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