Mental Health and Psychosocial Support

Program for mental health and psycho-social support during war and crisis

A flourishing, critical civil society requires people who can defend their rights and support those in need. To stand up for yourself and others in times of crisis, you need a resilient nervous system, trust in yourself and the people around you, and the ability to master challenges. Trauma, loss, and relentless work in crisis response wear these resources down. We support people in restoring them, so they can recover, regain their strength, and stay involved: in their communities, in supporting others, and in the causes they want to bring forward now.

In Ukraine, this need is especially pressing. Russia’s full-scale invasion has caused immense physical and psychological damage. The deliberate killing and injuring of civilians, among them humanitarian aid workers, the shelling and bombing of civilian housing and infrastructure, torture and rape leave wounds not only in the affected people but in families, communities, and society as a whole. Loss, displacement, and family separation deepen a hardship that has now lasted years.

Under these conditions, mental health is not a supplement to humanitarian and human rights work. It is its precondition. Activists who are burning out cannot sustain their organizations. Helpers whose nervous systems are in chronic high activation make worse decisions. Caregivers who pretend everything is fine cannot give children a real sense of safety. Children who live in fear cannot learn and grow.

This is why Libereco runs a program for mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) in Ukraine. Its goal is simple to state and demanding to achieve: helping people recover their ability to act, and thus building communities that can help themselves, tackle their problems, and keep developing.

Approach

Experience has shown that simply talking about terrible events does not significantly decrease their stress load. Trauma is not a story that needs retelling but an unfinished defense response: facing danger, the body mobilizes energy to fight, flee, or freeze. Once the threat has passed, a healthy nervous system discharges this survival energy and returns to a relaxed, open state. An overwhelmed nervous system can fail to do so. The energy remains in the body, the nervous system stays stuck in defense, and keeps signalling danger even in relatively safe environments. We therefore work with the body and the nervous system, helping them complete what was interrupted and restore their natural capacity to manage stress, self-regulate, and recover.

This body-based way of working is based on Somatic Experiencing (SE), the body-oriented method for resolving trauma developed by Peter Levine. On its principles, we have built a way to apply somatic interventions in war and crisis settings — where danger is ongoing, safety is relative, and support must have an immediate, palpable impact. In the past five years, it has proven highly effective where conventional modalities reach their limits.

Because knowledge only helps when it circulates, we build trauma literacy and somatic competence in local communities, so the approach multiplies beyond our own reach. The centerpiece of this teaching is our comic I CAN! — How to Cope with Stress, Overcome Challenges and Manage Conflicts: an accessible, culturally adapted handbook that professionals, volunteers, and families use in their daily work and lives. It is available for download on our website.

All our work in Ukraine happens in close cooperation with Ukrainian partners, first among them Somatic Experiencing Ukraine, the Resource Center Lisova Polyana, and Crisis Insight, and with more than 20 civil society organizations across the country. Together with them and our international partners, we spread this approach throughout Ukraine and beyond: our comic and workshops are beginning to reach other crisis contexts

Who we are

Our project teams consist of psychologists and psychotherapists trained in Somatic Experiencing, many of them with a track record of crisis work that reaches back to the beginning of the war in 2014. All of them know war from the inside, living and working in areas under frequent shelling. Most of them are internally displaced persons themselves, having lost their homes in Luhansk, Bakhmut, or Mariupol.

Our directions

Each of our directions addresses a different layer of the same problem: the consequences of stress and trauma for health, the ability to act and grow, and social cohesion.

Growing in tough times. Trauma-informed playshops

War shrinks the spaces where children can play with peers, roam and explore the world without adult supervision. School is mostly online, and in the face of frequent air raid alarms, mine contamination in lakes and forests, and a general sense of uncertainty, caregivers rather keep children at home. Our program meets children where they are, whether in frontline proximity or displacement, in distress or resilience. It offers space for real play, screen-free connection, and age-appropriate ways of being alive.

My nervous system at war. Navigating adolescence with curiosity and self-regulation

Being a teenager is not easy anywhere. When war, displacement, or loss become part of the picture, the nervous system can enter a chronic overdrive that leaves hardly any room for figuring out who you are, what you want to be, and whom you want to connect with. Our program introduces adolescents to somatic tools like the inner observer and the activation curve, which can bring more clarity and understanding of oneself and others. It creates respectful contexts that allow people to be whoever they are in the very moment.

Strength, not rigidity. Trauma-responsive parenting and caregiving

Adults raising children through war and crisis are often managing their own activated nervous systems while trying to “be strong for the child.” But pretending that things are okay when they are not, and shielding the child from what is going on, facilitates disconnection rather than health and growth. Our program helps parents and caregivers self-regulate and build the capacity for a genuine, attuned presence that provides children with a sense of safety and supports their healthy development even in hard circumstances.

Helping without harm. Stress and trauma literacy for helping professionals and volunteers

The humanitarian and crisis response to the war in Ukraine has drawn in thousands of people with exceptional commitment and often little awareness that what is meant to support can violate someone’s agency, dignity, or boundary — and their own. Our program builds stress and trauma literacy, applicable in daily life and during any form of crisis intervention. With such embodied knowledge, helpers listen differently, respond more compassionately, and help without unintentionally harming — others or themselves.

Self-care for saviors. Caring for your nervous system while others rely on it

Helpers in crisis contexts are often the last to notice their own exhaustion, pain, or dysregulation. There is always someone who is worse off and seems to need care more urgently than one’s own health. In practice, this logic leads to exhaustion, burnout, and serious health issues, limiting one’s capacity to help. The price for a lack of self-care is thus also paid by those who rely on getting help. In response to this dynamic, our program supports rescuers and helpers in reconnecting with the body, learning to take breaks and keep healthy boundaries, and developing sustainable rhythms of activation and restoration. Making a difference in the world is only possible from a point of good health and a resourced and regulated nervous system.

Coming home. Recovering and reconnecting for veterans and survivors of captivity and torture

We might think that returning from the battlefield or from captivity is pure relief. For the nervous system, however, it is not. A body that spent months and years in survival mode and was exposed to overwhelming events frequently cannot simply reset when coming home, or to whatever safer place is available. As a result, many find it impossible to return to civilian life the way others expect of them. We improve veterans’ recovery conditions by increasing trauma literacy in rehabilitation centers and other institutions that veterans rely on during their recovery, as well as in families and social networks. A trauma-responsive environment is as necessary as individual and group work for feeling safe enough to reconnect with oneself and others, and to find one’s own path toward recovery and growth.

Somatic Crisis Response. Somatic Experiencing Practitioner training for helping professionals

Somatic Experiencing is a powerful tool for integrating severe experiences of violence and well-suited for working in settings where the distress is ongoing. Ukrainian mental health professionals and crisis responders are increasingly seeking Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP) training to be better equipped to respond to the ongoing war. We organize cost-free SEP training for helping professionals and crisis responders to provide them with tools that instantly decrease feelings of helplessness in individuals and communities and bring Somatic Experiencing to the places where it is currently most needed.

Support this work

Everything described here — playshops near the frontline, retreats for exhausted helpers, SE training for crisis responders, or the free distribution of the comic manual I CAN! — is possible because people choose to fund it. Your donation keeps this support free for those who need it and helps carry an approach that works from Ukraine into other crisis regions. If you want people to stay capable of acting, helping, and rebuilding through this war, this is a direct way to make that happen.