Broken Minds | Finland looked aside when a group of people traumatized by the war came to the country, say some Ukrainians

Many Ukrainians who fled the war of aggression from Russia feel that Finland has not offered them enough psychological support. Some of the visitors feel that they have been left alone.

In Finland, psychological help is available even in the Ukrainian language, but it is very limited. It is also often difficult to find information about the services.

“You can’t always survive alone,” says someone who came to Helsinki from Kyiv in April 2022 Below Shlikhta.

According to Shlikhta, he was not offered psychological help, even though he was clearly mentally ill when he arrived in Finland. He had never even heard of the reception center’s usual initial health check before the HS interview.

“Finland has its good sides, but I haven’t been able to solve my own problems,” he says.

When Shlikhta was a client of the reception center in Espoo, he tried to turn to the center’s nurse with his problems. However, the phone time was only one hour a day, and the line was constantly busy.

Also Living with her children in the reception center in Riihimäki On Aneta have had difficulty getting mental health care. He does not appear in the story by his real name due to the sensitivity of the subject.

The family comes from the occupied territory of Ukraine. They have lived in Finland for a year and a half, and during the whole time they have not received mental health help from the reception center despite several requests.

“The social worker said that the psychologist is very expensive. That even Finns don’t use that,” says Aneta.

According to Aneta, both she and the children would need professional help and maybe even medication.

Result area manager Olli Snellman The Immigration Office’s reception unit says that all new customers coming to the reception system are basically told about healthcare services and offered the opportunity to participate in a health check.

However, the large number of Ukrainians arriving in Finland caused an exceptional situation.

“Especially last year, the initial health checks were certainly not able to be organized in the way that they would be organized in a very even situation,” he says by email.

The Finnish Immigration Service and other authorities are trying to reach those who have gone to homestays by publishing information about services and where to get them, translated into Ukrainian.

However, according to Snellman, the agency does not have reliable information on how much and what kind of help and services Ukrainians have received specifically for mental health challenges.

Snellman writes that the health care crisis and the overcrowding of specialized psychiatric care also affect people who have received temporary protection. So it’s hard to get help.

Ukrainians the mind is burdened by very different problems, but most often they are troubled by a sense of guilt and anxiety about the future, says the emotional counselor of the Ukraine Help Center Victoria Ivanova.

“The guilt that they left, and some stayed and are still bombarded, and not everyone has food. Many have also had to leave pets and domestic animals.”

Ivanova also came to Finland because of the war in the spring of 2022.

“Many do not know what to do in the future. Should I go back or stay here? The situation is especially complicated if one member of the family does not want to return, but others do. Then it is really difficult to make a decision.”

Even if you have decided to stay in Finland, it can be difficult to plan for the future. Often those who stay here have already reached the peak of their career in Ukraine.

“Here we all face the fact that we have to start from scratch, which is very difficult,” says Ivanova.

Support and discussion help in difficult life situations can be obtained from, for example, Mieli ry. It is available in six languages: Finnish, Swedish, English, Arabic, Ukrainian and Russian. The Ukrainian-language crisis hotline was opened in September 2022. It received about 250 calls a year.

In the beginning, people mainly asked about living in Finland and practical matters, this year there have been more and more calls about psychological problems, says the person in charge of Mieli ry’s Ukrainian-language crisis line Valentina Kolyvanova. Callers have anxiety and difficulties in relationships. Some calls are related to the death of loved ones.

The Finnish-language crisis hotline is on call every day around the clock, the Ukrainian-language line serves 20 hours a week on weekdays. According to statistics, this is enough time, says Kolyvanova. There is also an answering machine that you can call at any time and leave a phone number in the message for a later call back.

In addition to professionals, the crisis hotline is staffed by trained volunteers. According to Kolyvanova, crisis phones work in such a way that, based on one or two conversations, it is assessed what kind of help the customer needs.

“If the person who calls the crisis line needs other support after the conversation, we tell them where they can get it,” he says.

If necessary, customers will be referred to a health center or Ukraine aid center, where they can also get mental health support. The crisis hotline operator can ask if the person is ready to receive such help in order to get relief for their psychological well-being.

“He decides on the matter himself,” says Kolyvanova.

New when a crisis situation occurred, Shlikhta just called Mieli ry’s crisis hotline and got help from there. He was satisfied with the service. On the phone, they talked about breathing exercises that literally saved him at a critical moment.

However, Shlikhta would have preferred to deal with his problems with one specific professional, as he had been able to do in Ukraine. The crisis phone is not always answered by the same person. Telling the same story over and over feels like re-experiencing things every time. Private psychologists, on the other hand, are expensive, Shlikhta says.

Aneta also says that she once called the Ukrainian-language crisis line.

“It was like a conversation with a friend: he is silent, and you talk. But it’s not therapy. They are only volunteers.”

Shlikhta finds it difficult that psychological help is only available during the day and hopes to get help in the evening as well.

“When I need help, for example in the evening, when I feel really bad, what can I do? Do I have to be unemployed to use those services? Don’t the working people have any problems?” Shlikhta asks.

He says that he is covered by occupational health care, but the language barrier prevents him from seeing a doctor. At the reception of a private medical center, Shlikhta was told that the employees serve in Finnish or English. He had made an appointment with the doctor, but later canceled it because he tried to arrange an interpreter himself for the visit, but could not find one.

UkraineViktoria Ivanova, who provides psychological support at the help center, is a psychologist by profession in Ukraine, but obtaining the same title in Finland requires legalization.

At first, she offered spiritual support to Ukrainians fleeing the war as a volunteer, and then got a job at the Deaconess Institute, which cooperates with the Ukraine Aid Center.

Now his services are available at the help center by appointment three times a week, and he also conducts consultations on Saturdays in his free time.

Ivanova also works in the Deaconess Institute’s Working with Families activity, which creates friendships between Ukrainian and Finnish families and maintains a support group for Ukrainian women.

“On the basis of this project, I created the brochure ‘Tools for self-help in crisis situations’, which is aimed at Ukrainians who had to leave their homes, primarily those who are unable to visit a mental health professional. But the brochure does not cancel or replace cooperation with a psychologist,” says Ivanova.

When the Ukraine Help Center opened last spring and started offering psychological support, very few people were interested in it, because people first had to take care of practical things, such as housing, documents and school. Sometimes there were only two customers a week.

“Now my day can be completely scheduled. Previously, people weren’t ready for it or thought that the problems would go away by themselves,” says Ivanova.

Help center since opening, according to Ivanova, psychological support experts have managed up to a thousand individual visits. In addition to him, mental health support is offered there by one Russian-speaking employee of the Population Association and one Ukrainian volunteer.

Some organizations also offer Ukrainians the services of their employees who speak Russian or Finnish with the help of an interpreter.

“The special feature of working with an interpreter is that half of the one-hour visit is spent interpreting. No matter how professional the interpreter is, part of the contact and trust between the psychologist and the client disappears,” says Ivanova.

According to Ivanova, it is very important for mental health support to be provided by an expert who understands the person’s situation and is able to communicate in their mother tongue.

“The best solution is to hire Ukrainians to work with Ukrainians, and this is what some organizations do. I think the Finnish government should also do this in connection with helping the Ukrainians. It works,” says Ivanova.

The author is a Ukrainian journalist living in Finland and a student at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, who is doing an internship at Helsingin Sanomat. The text is edited by Marjaana Varmavuori HS.