FactArt – The community sees; life narratives

On 24th February 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine. This invasion brings immense consequences for health and health systems. According to Leon et. al. (2022) this event took place while the health systems in Europe struggle to rebalance the services and finances due to Covid-19 pandemic. In addition, physical and mental problems experienced by millions of refugees and internally displaced persons will be substantial. Since Slovakia share a border with Ukraine, an immense immigration influx started since the beginning of the invasion. In the Norwegian context The Norwegian Directorate of Immigration established a special schema to Ukrainian citizens that seek for asylum in the country and The Ministry of Education emplaced a workforce with several universities in order to receive students and university personnel. In this context School of Art, Design and Media, School of Health Sciences and School of Economics, Innovation and Technology intend to establish a cooperation involving University of Konstanz and Matej Bel University in Banska Bystrica to provide treatment that can mitigate trauma to refugees and to design a psychoeducational intervention based on storytelling and performing arts aiming to discuss trauma, violence, and conflict in a societal level.

One of the most common consequences of armed conflicts is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which is a set of symptoms resulting from a complex interaction involving multiple genetic, social and psychological factors. Within this perspective, it is known that the greater the number of exposures to traumatic events, the greater the probability of developing PTSD, called the cumulative effect of trauma or building block (KOLASSA et al., 2010). In populations affected by armed conflict, the prevalence rates for PTSD and depression are higher than those found in other populations without this characteristic of conflict (TOL et al, 2011). It was observed that in conflict-affected populations the mean prevalence of PTSD was 15.4% (30 studies) and 17.3% (26 studies) for depression. The average found in non-conflict countries was 7.6% (for any anxiety disorder, including PTSD) and 5.3% (including depressive disorder and other mood disorders). (THE WHO WORLD MENTAL HEALTH SURVEY CONSORTIUM, 2004).

In the sociohistorical and political scenario several universities around the globe including Høyskolen Kristiania, Matej Bel University (in Slovakia) and University of Konstanz (in Germany), announced in March 2022 that these universities would, in collaboration with their Ministries of Education, implement measures to ensure the future of Ukrainian refugees. This way the present proposal has five goals: (1) to plan how to offer in the future to the students and academics who will be received in these universities’ mental health support in order to mitigate the trauma trigged by the consequences of the Russian invasion; (2) to offer to the academic community of the universities that will receive the Ukrainian students the opportunity of understanding and reflect about the consequence of violent events and the opportunity to play an active role to prevent these events; (3) to be able in the future to collect data to be able to improve the development of techniques to handle trauma mitigation (4) to strengthen the collaboration between the different Schools in Høyskolen Kristiania; and (5) to build an international network with University of Konstanz and Matej Bel University in order to ensure a collaboration concerning technical and learning exchanges concerning trauma mitigation and the social understanding of context, history and consequences of this action.

The project is financed by Kristiania University College