Not a panacea, but a chance: How a psychological support app for veterans works

What is the problem?

According to the Ministry of Health estimates, at least 60% of Ukrainians need psychological help today — among the military personnel who saw the horrors of war, participated in battles, lost comrades, and broke through enemy fire, these numbers are even higher.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, sleep disturbances, suicidal thoughts, outbursts of anger, and sadness are far from the full spectrum of what Ukrainian veterans can experience after returning from the front lines.

Doctors, psychologists, and volunteers emphasize that it is essential for service members who have experienced war to have quality and, most importantly, affordable psychological support.

However, the stigmatization of psychological help in Ukraine often makes veterans shy away from seeking help until their quality of life deteriorates significantly and the problem becomes impossible to ignore. Some are stressed by the need for regular visits to the therapist's office,  while others think this way, they can be labeled sick or weak. Someone thinks this condition is short-lived or not severe and everything can go away by itself, and some simply do not know how to approach the problem and where to start.

What is the solution?

The solution is making the first step toward caring for your mental health easier for service members and veterans. For this purpose, a pocket psychologist was created in Ukraine — the Baza mobile application, launched in June 2022. A useful application for psychological first aid was developed by the non-governmental organization Psychological Support and Rehabilitation Free Choice, which has been working with the military since 2015, providing psychological support using evidence-based methods of cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy.

How does it work?

In general, psychological support can be of different types:

• urgent (crisis), right at the spot where something happened;
• in the format of therapy, when a psychologist works thoroughly with long-term conditions or disorders;
• in the form of accompaniment, for example, when a specialist accompanies a person in sorrow because grief as a reaction to loss is not treated, it (grieving) is allowed to happen;
• in the format of a psychologist's recommendations — regarding panic attacks, sleep, anger control problems, and generally regarding mental health support;
• with the use of IT — for example, with the help of applications that can be used at any convenient time.

It is the latter format that is used by the Baza mobile application, which is designed to make psychological first aid simple and accessible and, thus, to facilitate the process of adjusting veterans to civilian life. Thanks to working with the application, veterans will be able to understand their own conditions better and will be able to cope with them here and now.

Baza is the first mobile application in Ukraine for primary psychological support and psychoeducation (explaining and conveying to people the necessary information about mental health, psychological problems, and their consequences for the individual), developed specifically for veterans. It can be used anytime, anywhere in the world, without direct contact with other people.

The Baza application was created to help identify your feelings and states, find basic self-help tools, feel understood, and receive support from yourself. It has a set of tools for this purpose.

1️⃣ The app contains explanatory materials about mental health, self-help exercises, and useful contacts for veterans.

Here you can read about how to overcome:

• consequences of a mild craniocerebral injury;
• bad sleep;
• depression;
• chronic pain;
• anxiety;
• obsessive thoughts

2️⃣ There are also meditations in the application — eight thematic meditations, read by male and female voices, will help you work through your body, thoughts, emotions, and experience.

3️⃣ Baza also has a mood tracker, the ability to record your thoughts and states, and set reminders.

4️⃣ In addition, you can create your own profile with information and tools that are of interest and helpful to a specific user.

5️⃣ An essential part of the application is the Stop emergency button. By clicking on it, the user will receive four exercises to help regulate the crisis situation when the breakdown happens here and now.

6️⃣ Baza also allows one to write or call a psychotherapist and receive their response. The application includes the contacts of psychological support services Crisis Support Line of the Ukrainian Veteran Fund and LifeLine Ukraine. 

7️⃣ The application allows the user to remain anonymous. It can specify data about yourself only if you wish.

However, registration gives the user access to more functions, says the project manager, veteran Alina Vyatkina. For example, the mood tracker will help track how the contents of your life affect your condition. Often people don't notice the useless activities that eat up their energy and the useful ones that give it. This tracker will help you track connections and find what's useful and works for you. Flash cards are available without registration. This tool is small messages to yourself. Let's say you fill out this card when everything is ok, as support for yourself when mental health deteriorates, and there you remind yourself what you can do to make it easier.

The application is entirely free. It works from anywhere in the world. Baza is also available offline, so users can get help anytime, anywhere.

You can download the Baza mobile application using the following links:

• App Store https://apps.apple.com/ua/app/база/id6449841911?l=uk
• Google Play https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vilniy_vybir

You can join the Baza on social networks here: Facebook, Instagram, Telegram

The idea of psychological help in your pocket was born in the NGO Free Choice two years ago. The organization rightly believed that a convenient assistant on the phone, which is always at hand, can significantly help both psychologists and clients to keep focus and not forget to do the exercises necessary for psychological rehabilitation. The IREX International Veterans Reintegration Program helped implement the project, which became highly relevant to veterans already during a large-scale war.

The application was created over seven months. The project was implemented by 30 technical team members — developers, designers, and copywriters. Four mental health professionals filled the app with tools and techniques.

It is vital that Baza was created with the involvement of veterans. More than a hundred military personnel participated in the work on the application — someone passed the survey, and some joined the work with texts and meanings and viewed the visual component of the application. Veterans also checked that everything was accessible and easy to use.

Vyatkina says that the project has undergone many corrections and tests for its senses to hit the heart.

"I dreamed of making this application for myself when I returned from the war in the east of Ukraine in 2015 and did not understand what was happening to me and for all service members who will return," says the project's initiator.

The veterans who participated in the development of the application add:

"I consider initiatives to support the psychological state of fighters to be useful and very timely."

— Mykhas, junior lieutenant, a veteran of Aidar battalion, an assault battalion of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, volunteer.

"I worked with the texts, checked whether everything was OK, whether it was easy to understand and did not trigger anything. After the first paragraph, the text hit the heart because I saw myself and my comrades there."

— Sokil, a soldier of the 95 Separate Airborne Assault Battalion.

"I believe that this application will be very useful. In Ukraine, the practice of going to therapy is not yet so developed."

— Mykhailo, volunteered to go the front line.

Although Baza is aimed at helping veterans and was developed at their request, any Ukrainian who suffered a traumatic experience due to Russia's aggression can use the application.

The application can be useful for soldiers who do not have the opportunity to talk to someone on the front line or for relatives and friends of veterans. It will help to understand better what a person who has returned from the front line is going through and how to help them adapt to a new life.

The application developers emphasize that Baza is not a replacement for psychotherapy and not a panacea. Still, it is a chance to better understand your conditions and provide yourself with primary psychological support. There are already reviews from military personnel who have started using the application. 

"Baza is a good opportunity to pay attention to my mental state and help myself in a comfortable format. I have already started making flashcards because sometimes I want to talk to the self that had a lot of energy and inspiration for doing the job. I have already started to monitor my mood because it changes quite often at work, and it is important for me to understand that there have already been black streaks, and I know how to overcome them," writes one of the users.

The NGO Free Choice promises that the application will develop.

"We have our own plans for it, and we are not giving details yet. Of course, we will consider feedback from those who will test the application before the next update," says Vyatkina.

Even more useful solutions!

It is impossible to get used to war, but you can help yourself to survive mentally during the war. Here are some tips for Ukrainians from Free Choice psychologists:

1. Choose the position of managing your life, not the role of the victim. The victim position deprives a person of free will, darkens the brain, and prevents it from making the right decisions.
2. Energize your day. To overcome uncertainty and anxiety, ordinary everyday tasks help — cooking food, taking a shower, sleeping, delighting yourself with something tasty, doing your favorite thing, and helping those who are worse off.
3. Control the negativity around you. You can't change or influence what happens, but you can choose how often you watch the news and consume content.
4. Join volunteer work. Nothing gives you more confidence than knowing you are working hard to win. Working for the country's economy, smiling or supporting those who are not feeling well, donating to the Armed Forces, becoming a volunteer — all this helps physically and emotionally.
5. Find an opportunity to recover. Go on vacation to or with friends, visit new places, meet new people, and learn something new. It helps to maintain mental health.