Abstract: Since 2014 and particularly following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, large segments of the population have been exposed to prolonged armed conflict, military occupation, and repeated cycles of displacement and deoccupation. These conditions have generated substantial mental health needs while simultaneously undermining the capacity to deliver psychological services, especially in temporarily occupied and recently deoccupied territories. This narrative review synthesizes international and Ukrainian peer-reviewed psychological and psychiatric research, official governmental statistics, and international reports on mental health needs and service delivery in occupied and postoccupied territories, using practice-based material from Ukraine as an illustrative case. The review examines (a) mental health needs among populations affected by occupation and postoccupation conditions; and (b) structural, ethical, and practical challenges of delivering psychological services in these contexts. Available evidence indicates a high prevalence of trauma-related symptoms, depression, anxiety, and complex stress reactions among adults and children, alongside significant disruptions to mental health infrastructure and workforce capacity. Direct empirical research conducted in occupied territories remains limited, necessitating reliance on proxy populations such as internally displaced persons and returnees. To complement population-level findings, the review incorporates practice-based evidence from approximately 400 individual consultations and 20 group sessions conducted in deoccupied territories of northern and eastern Ukraine in 2022. These interventions, grounded in a person-centered therapeutic approach, illustrate the feasibility and clinical relevance of brief, crisis-oriented psychological support in postoccupation settings. The findings underscore the need for flexible, ethically adaptive, and community-embedded mental health interventions integrated into broader postoccupation recovery and reintegration frameworks.
Olha Shevchuk (Tue,) studied this question.