The ability of children in Ukraine to continue their primary education after the Russian invasion is inextricably linked to the direct providers of education – primary school teachers. This study aimed to clarify the psychological effects of the war on Ukrainian primary school teachers and their everyday educational activities, using teachers in the city of Kryvyi Rih as a case study. The research design included personal and professional data, questions on changes in students and the educational process, Psychological Stress Measure (PSM-9), Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI), Brief Resilience Scale (BRS), and Miroshnyk Teacher’s Roles Self-Assessment Scale (MiTeRoSA) integrated into an online survey conducted three months after the invasion. In the results, primary education in Ukraine during the invasion required teachers (n=495) to make significant changes in their work, namely shifts in schedules, increased workload, conducting remote lessons, providing tutoring for certain students, conducting crisis interventions with a broader range of subjects, and volunteering. The majority of the surveyed practitioners experienced considerable stress due to a significant increase in the amount of time they spent preparing their lessons. The psychological conditions of primary school teachers depended on the number of students who were expelled and new students who had been evacuated from other war-torn regions, the ability of school administrators to re-organize the work for online teaching, and perceived support from colleagues. All of these factors along with resilience were predictors of stress and burnout among teachers in wartime. Teachers experiencing burnout, especially exhaustion, high-stress scores, and low levels of resilience frequently evaluated the performance of their students with more leniency. In addition to a list of typical teachers’ roles (MiTeRoSA), teachers indicated frequently taking on the new roles of a ‘tutor’ and a ‘crisis counselor’ in response to the war.

The body image is to be reconstructed during adolescence, which is more difficult in the case of somatic illness and social stigma. This research aimed to study adolescents' body image with scoliosis, students of a special educational institution in Ukraine socially identified with stigma as 'a school for scoliotics'. The participants (n=104) of the research were adolescents (13-15 years old) with scoliosis from the institution mentioned above (n=52, 24 males, 28 females) and adolescents without scoliosis from the same city (n=52, 24 males, 28 females). Two methods were used to collect the data: (1) Self-portraits; (2) Dembo-Rubinstein Self-Assessment Scale. The adolescents with scoliosis and labeled as 'scoliotics' face additional obstructions in their psychic body development compared to their peers. For instance, they tend to overinvest in the desired image of a healthy body and do not feel able to get it. We found the markers of four different ways to cope with the situation by the adolescents with scoliosis: (a) identification as 'a scoliotic' instead of hope to be cured soon; (b) psychological distancing from the others to preserve the desire of a more attractive body image; (c) repression or denial of the body parts which could relate to scoliosis; (d) infantilization, aimed to slow down the discovery of their maturing corporeality. Consequently, adolescents with scoliosis affected by stigma experience the gap or conflict between their current, desired and perceived realistic body image.

Introduction: After eight years of the war in the East of Ukraine, two years of the COVID-19 pandemic with relevant lockdowns, and two months of bomb alerts, school students and school psychologists from Kryvyi Rih have been dealing with new brutal military actions during the Russian invasion of Ukraine since the 24th February 2022. Purpose: This paper focuses on School Psychological Services' changes and challenges caused by the Russian invasion. It assesses war-related psychological effects on school students and school psychologists from Kryvyi Rih. Method: Brief non-structured interviews and the survey. Results and Conclusions: After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, School Psychological Services in Kryvyi Rih continued their work remotely, often combining it with in-person meetings (48.5%) and other volunteer activities (27.9%). The surveyed school psychologists (n=48) informed they conducted more individual consultations and psychoeducation and fewer diagnostics than usual to address school students' changing needs in response to wartime. School psychologists felt more effective and involved with students when they believed they got enough support from colleagues and supervisors, learned crisis interventions, received clear guidance, and did not feel burnout. They appreciated current governmental guidance and felt their post-traumatic growth more when they were safe. After 1.5 months of the war, 43.8% of psychologists experienced burnout. At least a quarter needed additional education, psychological support, easily accessible supervision (especially short and rapid), and guidance for specific cases.

Since 2011 primary school students with special educational needs (SEN) in Ukraine have been allowed to study alongside mainstream students in the inclusive education program established by the Ministry of Education and Science. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 challenged the possibility of maintaining inclusive education for children with SEN, which required providers to find new solutions. This paper focuses on the first response of inclusion providers in the Ukrainian primary school education system to the challenges of working in wartime from February to May 2022, using teachers in the city of Kryvyi Rih as a case study. A quasi-experimental study (n=495) involved a group of inclusion providers (n=92) in comparison to mainstream primary school teachers (n=403). The research included: collecting data on the professional qualifications and experience of the teachers; questions on changes in the educational process and the number of students; the Psychological Stress Measure; Oldenburg Burnout Inventory; Brief Resilience Scale; and Miroshnyk Teacher’s Roles Self-Assessment Scale (MiTeRoSA), designed as an online survey. The inclusion providers faced numerous challenges due to the war, namely, (a) the enormous workload of preparing for classes (φ*=8.7, p<.01), the extended non-educational work assignments (φ*=5.5, p<.01), working with students (φ*=2.9, p<.01) and their parents (φ*=3.5, p<.01), (b) volunteering at school, and (c) the changed composition of student groups, i.e., students who left school and fled the area (in 64.1% of responses) and incoming students displaced from combat zones (27.2%). Struggling with stress and burnout (self-reported by 48.91% of inclusion providers), using psychological self-care skills and social resilience capacity through the support of the student's parents and colleagues, primary school teachers invented and implemented seven ways to maintain education for the students with SEN, the kind of which depended on the teacher's professional role structure and available social support.