SPECIFICITY OF YOUTH ADAPTATION STRATEGIES IN THE CONTEXT OF UNCERTAINTY CAUSED BY WAR

Abstract

The article presents the results of an empirical study of adaptive behavior strategies in a situation of life uncertainty caused by the full-scale war in Ukraine, and examines typical ways of overcoming war-related stress among young people who are not in the combat zone and are not participants in the war. A total of 178 people of different genders, aged 18 to 32, residents of Chernihiv and the region were surveyed. The study found that to overcome stress, respondents most often use information search, communication, discussion of the current situation, concentration of efforts on various activities, and self-hypnosis or switching attention to other topics. The following coping strategies are identified as the most commonly used by respondents. A positive correlation between the coping strategies «avoidance-escape», «distancing», «positive reassessment», «search for social support», «building an action plan» and the psychological well-being of youth has been established. It was found that the most adaptive strategies in the conditions of war are distancing, seeking social support and avoidance. It is concluded that in a situation of life uncertainty caused by war, the use of problem-oriented coping strategies decreases in favor of emotionally oriented ones, and behavioral strategies decrease in favor of cognitive ones, which may be due to the reflection of war in the individual consciousness as an uncontrollable, unpredictable situation, the improvement of which does not depend on the efforts of the subject. At the same time, the use of problem-oriented coping may be associated with attempts to reduce stress by cognitively assessing the situation, reflecting on and discussing the current state of affairs, predicting the development of events, and forecasting consequences. The search for information about what is happening is one of the most common forms of problem-oriented coping, which provides not only distraction but also intellectual processing, leading to a reassessment, a change in attitude towards the current situation and giving it a new meaning and personal significance.