CONTENT AND DETERMINANTS OF STUDENT YOUTH EXPERIENCING THE CRISIS OF LOSS OF A SENSE OF SAFETY

Abstract

The paper presents and analyzes the results of research of the content and determination of the students` personal crisis caused by the war. 112 students Ukrainian students who are mastering psychology profession have been involved in the study. It has been established that the extreme conditions of life, which are accompanied by powerful threats to the mental and vital health of young people in wartime, provoke them to experience a crisis of loss of a sense of safety. The specifics of this personal crisis are found in a close connection of the reaction to external vital challenges and activation of mental stressful experiences. The reasons of such experiences are defined as following: loss of a sense of safety, stability and organization, control and predictability of their own lives. Student youth being in the vortex of war makes young people revise the basic beliefs: good prevails in the world, not evil; the world and human life have meaning; the value of one’s physical and mental self is undeniable. The most vivid indicators of a crisis are strong frustration and traumatic emotional feeling of anxiety. The adaptive reaction to extreme events to a large extent depends on resilience potential of the youth. A constructive way out of the crisis manifests itself as the crystallization of life values, justice and self-respect, increasing resilience and adaptability to stressful life circumstances. The destructive experience of a crisis of loss of a sense of safety is manifested in helplessness, hopelessness, activation of protective mechanisms of displacement, avoidance, isolation. For future psychologists, unresolved developmental traumas in combination with pathogenic introspection and an unbalanced self-concept appear as complicating factors for experiencing a crisis of loss of a sense of safety. Timely provided psychological aid and social support to a young person facilitates their constructive way out of the personal crisis.