Ukrainian teachers' mental health benefits from training to help their students

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Educators in three conflict zones in Ukraine who participated in a virtual program to learn about supporting the mental health needs of their students significantly reduced their own symptoms of anxiety and depression, a recent study found.

Researchers at universities in three countries — the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the U.S., Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University in Ukraine and the Open University in the United Kingdom — partnered with the global nonprofit Americares and Smart Osvita, a nongovernmental organization based in Kyiv, Ukraine, on the study.

The project evaluated a virtual mental health intervention called Psychosocial Support for Educators that was provided to 881 educators who were living in three conflict-affected regions of Ukraine. The research was commissioned by Americares and funded by the Cencora Impact Foundation.

Ukrainian psychologists and Smart Osvita codesigned the psychosocial training program, ensuring that the materials reflected the cultural, emotional and professional needs of Ukrainian educators living and working in active war zones.

Participation in the PSE intervention increased teachers’ knowledge and readiness to support the mental health of their students who were affected by trauma and war — and reduced their own symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression as well, the study found.

“We found that the educators in the PSE treatment group reported significantly greater improvements in their mental health, well-being, knowledge of psychosocial support strategies and readiness to provide psychological support to students compared with their peers in the control group,” said the paper’s first author Tara Powell, a professor and the associate dean for research in social work at Illinois whose research examines the behavioral health needs of disaster survivors. “The PSE participants also experienced greater reductions in their anxiety and depression symptoms, perceived stress and feelings of burnout.”

The postintervention improvements were largely sustained or increased at the one-month follow-up, the team wrote.

“This study is one of the first to demonstrate the positive and lasting impact of virtual mental health training for educators living through this war,” said Rose Hogan, Americares’ deputy senior vice president of quality, impact and learning. “The findings highlight how targeted psychosocial support can strengthen the mental health and resilience of teachers — who are often both caregivers and survivors — so they are better equipped to support the children in their classrooms.”

More than 3,700 schools and universities have been destroyed or damaged by military shelling in the Russia-Ukraine war, displacing staff and students, and abruptly forcing teachers to shift lessons to remote learning or tutoring, according to the study.

Psychosocial interventions for Ukraine’s educators are urgently needed because they face  significant emotional stress and personal trauma — such as risks of death or injury, the loss of loved ones and damage to or the destruction of their homes or workplaces — that can hinder their ability to perform their jobs effectively and impact their students’ learning, the team said.

Published in the journal Global Mental Health, the study included 572 educators who participated in the PSE training and 309 who were in the control group. Almost half of the participants (49%) were in Southeastern Ukraine, with nearly equal numbers of the remaining educators from the Central and Western regions of the country.

The majority of the participants were female and veteran teachers with at least 16 years’ experience. Slightly more than 62% worked in secondary schools, about 26% were employed in primary schools and the remaining participants taught in preschools, vocational schools or other settings.

For those in the PSE treatment group, the training included live presentations by psychologists, recorded videos, self-assessment quizzes and supplemental reading materials on topics such as recognizing mental health conditions and those common in war-affected children, providing support and referring individuals for professional help.

Those in the control group did not receive the training but were surveyed along with those in the PSE treatment group at three times points — at baseline, the conclusion of the intervention and in a one-month follow-up. The surveys assessed respondents’ well-being and symptoms of stress, burnout, depression and anxiety; their mental health knowledge; and their readiness to provide psychosocial support to distressed students and their families.

“It was quite challenging for us to organize and secure a sufficient number of participants to conduct a representative study,” said Oksana Makarenko, the project lead at Smart Osvita. “Due to ongoing shelling across regions of Ukraine, some participants were forced to interrupt their online learning sessions and move to shelters. Widespread damage to Ukraine’s energy infrastructure also led to prolonged power outages and the loss of internet access, making it impossible for many participants to attend group sessions for hours or even days.”

Only survey responses from participants who were able to complete all components were included in the analysis, said Makarenko, who was a co-founder of Smart Osvita.

“The importance of enhancing teachers’ knowledge of mental health and psychosocial support skills in conflict regions cannot be overstated,” Powell said. “Students in these areas have complex psychological needs, and our findings suggest that the PSE intervention increases teachers’ preparation for dealing with them.”

The paper was co-written by Natalia Portnytska, Iryna Tychyna and Olha Savychenko, all of Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University. Portnytska is head of the department of social and practical psychology; Tychyna is dean of the faculty of social and psychological education; and Savychenko is a professor of social and practical psychology.

The co-authors at Smart Osvita also included psychologist Tetiana Shyriaieva, who was the project’s scientific adviser, and project manager Kateryna Cherniavska.

Rebecca Carney, the then-mental health and psychosocial support coordinator at Americares and now the MHPSS coordinator at International Medical Corps; and Illinois graduate student Jenna Muller also co-wrote the paper.