Coping and emotions of global higher education students to the Ukraine war worldwide

Aristovnik, Aleksander (author), Ravšelj, Dejan (author), Umek, Lan (author), Tomaževič, Nina (author)

Trauma scientists have raised the alarm about the devastating consequences of the Ukraine war on mental health. We examined how higher education students—as indirect victims—coped with this conflict and how they emotionally reacted during 2022. We involved 2314 students from 16 countries through an online survey. A structural equation model indicated significant relations between war-related worry about military and macroeconomics domains and two coping strategies (opposition, support giving), in turn significantly linked with six emotions. The model was strongly invariant across gender, study field, and geographic area. The most frequent emotions were anger and anxiety, followed by two future-centred emotions (hopelessness and hope). Emotions were more frequent for females and students of the countries geographically close to the war region. Our findings call for evidence-based policy recommendations to be implemented by institutions to combat the negative short and long-term psychological sequelae of being witnesses of armed conflicts.

• Language: English
• Keywords: Ukraine war, higher education students, mental health, consequences, coping strategies, emotions
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FU - Faculty of Administration
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2024
• Number of pages: Str. 1-11
• Numbering: Vol. 14
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-155751
• UDC: 378-057.875:355.01(477):159.944.4
• ISSN on article: 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-59009-3
• COBISS.SI-ID: 192509443
• Publication date in RUL: 15.04.2024

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Scientific reports
• Shortened title: Sci. rep.
• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
• ISSN: 2045-2322
• COBISS.SI-ID: 18727432

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: vojna v Ukrajini, študenti, duševno zdravje, posledice, strategije spoprijemanja s stresom, čustva

Projects

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: P5-0093
• Name: Razvoj sistema učinkovite in uspešne javne uprave