PECULIARITIES OF SOCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ADAPTATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF CRISIS SURVIVAL SKILLS IN INDIVIDUALS AFFECTED BY TRAUMATIC EVENTS OF THE ARMED CONFLICT

Abstract

This article deals with the negative impact of traumatic events of the armed conflict in the East of Ukraine on the psyche and social psychological adaptation of the affected people. They have a distinct stress disorder and mostly lack skills and knowledge of how to deal with their state and feelings they are experiencing. It is important to emphasize the fact that this phenomenon has impact not only on the combatants, but 177 also on their close surrounding – family, friends, acquaintances, who often don't know how to behave and react. Stress can lead to a crisis because of the repeated failure to get rid of it. Life goals disappear, a person is not able to see the future or set other objectives, to find a new meaning of his/her life. As a result, adapting to the new reality becomes complicated. When stressed, a person mostly resorts to such forms of psychological adaptation as coping strategies and other mechanisms of psychological protection. In the process of psychological adaptation coping strategies have compensatory functions, whereas psychological protective mechanisms provide decompensation. However, they give time for the mind to develop more effective methods of overcoming stress. The task of the experts of any specialty is to help the person adapt to the new living conditions and return to the usual lifestyle as quickly as possible. It is important to find and promptly re-establish the links between the past and the present, to restore the picture of the world, which existed before the injury, on the basis of professional affiliation, perceived roles, behavior, which can be renewed at present conditions of life. According to experts, absence of the concept, national programme and the system of rehabilitation measures, persistently aggravate the problem of mental disorders, exponentially increasing its negative social, economic and political consequences.