Viktoria Arnautova, 44, head of the Maibuttia Resource Center in Kyiv, which includes 25 psychologists, including Hryhoryan, said that soldiers at the front experience combat stress. Like common stress, it consists of four stages: shock, the adrenaline stage, exhaustion, and retrieval, or post-traumatic growth.
At the seminars, psychologists explain to the soldiers how they will feel at each stage, and how they can help themselves and each other.
“The most critical thing is to give psychological education to the military at the very beginning of their service, during their training,” Arnautova said. “But we were only able to do so for the fifth and sixth waves of mobilization. Now we have to deal with the consequences of that.”