Coping and emotions during the Ukraine war: A multi-country survey among higher education students indirectly exposed to the conflict

Trauma scientists have raised the alarm about the devastating consequences of the Ukraine war on mental health. We examined how higher education students – as indirect victims – coped with this conflict and how they emotionally reacted during 2022. We involved 2314 students from 16 countries through an online survey. A structural equation model indicated significant relations between war-related worry about military and macroeconomics domains and two coping strategies (opposition, support giving), in turn significantly linked with six emotions. The model was strongly invariant across gender, study field, and geographic area. The most frequent emotions were anger and anxiety, followed by two future-centred emotions (hopelessness and hope). Emotions were more frequent for females and students of the countries geographically close to the war region. Our findings call for evidence-based policy recommendations to be implemented by institutions to combat the negative short and long-term psychological sequelae of being witnesses of armed conflicts

Coping and emotions during the Ukraine war: A multi-country survey among higher education students indirectly exposed to the conflict

Introduction On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine launching a war that is still provoking traumatic economic, social, and psychological consequences worldwide (Jawaid et al., 2022; Kurapov et al., 2023). Wars cause increased psychopathology also for indirect victims, included higher education, HE, students (Baschnagel et al., 2009; Ben-Zur et al., 2012). We investigated how HE students – as indirect victims – coped with the conflict and how they felt during 2022. We had three aims: (1) testing a model in which worry due to war-related domains was linked to war-related coping strategies, in turn linked to war-related emotions, (2) testing the model invariance, and (3) exploring gender, study field, and geographic area differences in emotions. Method We involved 2314 students (Mage = 23.30, SD = 5.74; 56% females) from 16 countries (Croatia, Ecuador, Gambia, Greece, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, and Spain). They completed an online survey formed by 36 questions. We assessed the extent of worry due to different war-related domains (education, macroeconomics, and military; Bronfenbrenner, 2005), the agreement with statements about war-related coping strategies (opposition and support giving; Skinner & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2016), and the frequency of six emotions (anger, shame, anxiety, hopelessness, hope, and pride; Raccanello et al., 2022). Results We used the R software. A structural equation model revealed significant relations between war-related worry about military and macroeconomics domains and the two coping strategies, significantly related to the emotions. A measurement invariance analysis indicated that the model resulted strongly invariant across gender, study field, and geographic area. Through linear mixed models, we found that students felt more frequently anger and anxiety, followed by hopelessness and hope; in addition, females and students of the countries geographically close to the war region felt more intense emotions. Discussion Knowledge about indirect victims’ coping and emotional reactions is the base to develop actions to support them. Notwithstanding limitations such as the self-report nature of the data, our results call for evidence-based policy guidelines to be followed by institutions to cope with the traumatic psychological consequences of being witnesses of wars