Adapting Psychological Assessment to War Contexts

The ongoing war in Ukraine presents unprecedented challenges for conducting psychological assessment and intervention, highlighting the need for scalable, multimodal, and accessible mental health screening tools. Traditional self-report methods, such as questionnaires, are limited by context-dependent diagnostic accuracy, variable engagement, vulnerability to misinterpretation, and response distortion. This contribution offers an innovative attention-based approach to assessment that integrates evaluation of behavioral signals, such as eye-tracking metrics of attention bias (AB) derived from webcam-based gaze estimation to processes of symptom screening. Specifically, Anima – a remote, webcam-based AB assessment tool, designed for war-affected settings – is discussed regarding its theoretical basis as a state-sensitive indicator of AB. Anima is presented in light of its methodological advantages through use of free-viewing eye tracking. Implementation constraints under humanitarian crisis conditions are also discussed. Specifically, this contribution offers the result of an investigation, utilizing Anima, regarding daily variations in air-attack severity with measurements of functioning with a sample of 6,339 cases between October 2024 and November 2025. Results showed that temporal changes in dysphoric mood were associated with Russian air strikes’ severity. Conclusions are made about the use of the new technologies as well as about assessment methods utilized under conditions of chronic threat, especially self-report or attention-based instruments.