Psychological assistance for children in Bucha

We would like to express our sincere gratitude for your support and share the results of our work over three months in test mode. Thanks to your belief in our idea and generous help, we have created a safe place where every child and adult can feel in harmony and development.

During the first three months of the Family Center for Mental Wellbeing "Your Support" we provided almost 700 services of various kinds to 415 people, including 256 children and 159 adults.

We would like to share with you a story that illustrates our work, telling about a mother and her teenage daughter who sought help from a psychologist at our center. The girl has gone through many difficult life moments in her life that would be a great challenge for an adult.
The war in Ukraine caught them in the epicenter of the greatest horror - the Buchan community. The crisis of adolescence was compounded by the horrors of the occupation: the girl saw murders, cruelty, and deaths of people living nearby. Luckily, the mother and daughter managed to get out of the epicenter of the tragedy - they left through the green corridor. The road was difficult and risky. They managed to get to the border and leave for a safe country. It would seem that everything is over, but the hardest part for this family began far away from the shelling and occupation! They suffered an extremely difficult blow in a place where there are no missiles and no killing by the occupiers. The girl had a hard time adapting to a new country. The first signs of depression began. Her father was not there. He stood up to defend the state and is still in the war zone. An unfamiliar language, environment, city, life, lack of everyday routine and constant worry about the life of her father could not but affect the girl's psychological state at a transitional age. She became withdrawn, did not accept her mother, and did not make contact with her. After a difficult year of living abroad, her mother decided that her daughter would be better off at home and returned to Ukraine.

At home, there were no particular changes: both mother and daughter were in anxiety. The girl got involved with a bad company and started abusing alcohol. She became prone to self-harm, and there were attempts to commit suicide. The mother lost all hope of getting closer to her daughter and could not stand the psychological stress either. The only hope was for a specialist. In the process of working in our center with a psychologist, we worked on establishing a relationship between the mother and the teenager. We analyzed family relationships, identified unconstructive communication formats, outlined our own boundaries, and respected the boundaries of others. We worked on stabilizing the mother's own condition, finding her own resources and supports. We worked on a healthy way of communicating with her daughter and harmonizing their relationship.

As a result of the work, positive changes began to take place: a decrease in anxiety, the establishment of a relationship between mother and daughter, and healthy positive communication. The girl became more open-minded, stopped hanging out with bad company, started studying better, found a hobby and started playing sports with her mother.

We are grateful to everyone who has joined our large community, which has already fallen in love with our space and our specialists!

Since February 24, 2022, as part of the project "Help Ukraine! Stop the War", the Charitable Foundation "Your support" has been providing assistance to Ukrainians affected by the war. These are 135 medical institutions in Ukraine, more than 77 orphanages and more than 5000 internally displaced persons who have received temporary housing and support in our Shelter in Lviv.