Alexander A. Lupis, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist based in Washington, DC. He is also a moderator of the National Psychological Association (NPA) of Ukraine and a member of the Committee on International Relations at the American Psychological Association (APA). His volunteer work has focused on helping Ukraine’s National Psychological Association expand their work with support from experts in Europe and the United States. Lupis’s mother and maternal grandparents were from Mariupol and came to the US after WWII as refugees.
I hate feeling powerless and helpless. After two months of watching the news about the Russian invasion, I was reaching my limit. But I wondered, what can I do? I’m a clinical psychologist with a private practice in Northwest Washington, DC, and am of Ukrainian descent. I realized I can have the biggest impact by using my professional training and contacts in the US to support psychologists in Ukraine.
I did some googling and in April emailed the National Psychological Association (NPA) in Ukraine, a national organization supporting psychologists. The following month I had several rounds of emails and then several Zoom conversations with NPA’s leaders—Dr. Valeriia Palii, Dr. Oleg Burlachuk, and Dr. Mariana Velykodna. In June, they invited me to help expand NPA’s free online training—courses, seminars, supervision—for some 1,500 psychologists working throughout Ukraine.
By the summer I was joining as many of NPA’s Zoom calls as I could—in between doing my psychotherapy sessions and parenting my three young daughters—to get a better idea of how I could help. I contacted my former psychology professors, former clinical supervisors at hospitals where I had been trained, and the American Psychological Association’s (APA) different divisions to find psychologists who specialized in working with victims of mass trauma. Communication with NPA staff became harder in the fall and winter when Russian forces started targeting Ukraine’s electric grid with missiles, periodically disrupting power for computers, cell phones, and internet servers.
Navigating psychologists through war
Dr. Palii is NPA’s president, as well as a private practice psychotherapist in Kyiv who also does psychological testing with candidates for sensitive government positions. After the Russian invasion in February 2022, NPA received tremendous support from numerous psychological associations in Europe and around the world. Dr. Palii and APA international affairs director Amanda Clinton and senior staff at the European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations led a successful effort to have the Russian Psychological Society (RPS) expelled from the EFPA on June 1 after RPS refused to condemn the invasion.
Both Dr. Palii and Dr. Burlachuk also led an initiative to establish a network of crisis telephone and video hotlines throughout Ukraine (and in a dozen neighboring Central European countries for refugees) where Ukrainians could receive free psychological support and referrals for treatment. The NPA crisis hotline launched in June 2022 with funding from APA and UNDP, technical support from Amazon and Deloitte, and staff training from the Portuguese Psychological Association (OPA). In the first seven months of operation the hotline handled 2,644 calls, mostly individuals from within Ukraine (74%) seeking help with acute stress, relationship/family conflicts, anxiety/depression, and loss of housing/employment. I provided support by reaching out to Dr. Marc Hillibrand, a psychologist and crisis specialist at Yale Medical School, who arranged for the crisis hotline staff to receive pro bono training in counseling individuals contemplating suicide from the American Association of Suicidology.
Dr. Velykodna is NPA’s treasurer, as well as a psychology professor and psychoanalyst in private practice in Kyiv. She leads an NPA initiative to increase training and support for overwhelmed supervisors, senior psychologists who are providing advice and support to early career psychologists conducting talk therapy. There was a staggering increase in demand for psychotherapy from the public when the invasion started, and as a result many psychologists sought out support from a limited number of seasoned psychologists who specialized in supervision. I reached out to Dr. Sarah Hedlund, a supervision trainer at the Washington School of Psychology, who initiated a weekly online supervision group for a dozen NPA supervisors throughout Ukraine. Dr. Velykodna and Dr. Hedlund are currently planning to expand training and support for psychology supervisors, as the demand for psychotherapy as well as psychotherapy supervision remains very high in Ukraine.
Dr. Burlachuk is NPA’s Secretary, a founder of NPA, and a specialist in psychological testing currently based in Warsaw, Poland. He is leading an NPA initiative to expand the availability of Ukrainian-language psychological tests used to diagnose post-traumatic stress disorder in adults and children. I reached out to Prof. Hadas Pade, an assessment specialist at APA’s division on clinical psychology, so that Dr. Burlachuk could start identifying useful trauma-related tests and negotiate with their owners to get permission to have them translated into Ukrainian. I also reached out on behalf of Dr. Burlachuk to Dr. Stephen Cozza and Dr. Christin Ogle at the Department of Defense’s Uniformed Services University. They set up an online training program for NPA psychologists on how to work effectively with traumatized soldiers and their families, as there has been a significant increase in soldiers and their families seeking out psychotherapy since the war started.
Engagement, optimism and hope amidst war
Volunteering with NPA helped me realize how similar American and Ukrainian cultures are. In well-run organizations in both countries, you need to be a good team player and authority tends to be decentralized, flexible, and consensual. I have watched Dr. Palii run numerous large and small Zoom meetings with a light, positive touch—despite the constant risk of sudden power outages and air raid sirens signaling incoming Russian missiles. (Palii received an APA Presidential Citation in July 2022 in recognition of her leadership of NPA during the invasion.)
The war has reminded me of New York City after 9/11, where I lived and worked at the time. A day or two after that massive attack, we all just went back to work and did our best to be productive while slowly try to come to terms with the horror of what had just happened. Looking at this current war through the eyes of Ukrainian psychologists, I realized they are having something like a 9/11 every day for a year and counting. And they just keep going back to work calmly and doing the best they can to help their patients, waiting for this horrific war to end. The resilience is incredible and inspiring.
Volunteering with NPA has made me feel optimistic about Ukraine’s future. I have only seen tremendous professionalism, energy and growth in how NPA is supporting hardworking psychologists, so that those psychologists can better serve the wartime needs of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers working together towards victory. Given adequate support from the US and the European Union in the coming years and decades, I have faith that Ukraine is on a path towards becoming an influential and dynamic European country, with a robust mental healthcare system to help reduce the painful psychological legacies of wartime losses and trauma.
Support NPA: You can support the important work of the National Psychological Association in Ukraine by making a donation at: https://www.npa-ua.org/donate.