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

Palace, M ORCID: 0000-0003-3016-2118, 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 (2025) 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

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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
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
Date of acceptance:	24 March 2025
Date of first compliant Open Access:	25 March 2025
Date Deposited:	25 Mar 2025 10:11
Last Modified:	09 Sep 2025 12:30
DOI or ID number:	10.1037/tra0001942
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/25983

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