For already 4 months the Centre for Spiritual and Psychological Counseling has been operating at the Faculty of Psychology and Sociology of EENU. This period of quarantine has been marked by more than 100 calls for help.
It is worth mentioning that the weakening of quarantine has not influenced the number of requests in any way. We believe it is due to the fact that people started to pay more attention to problems inside their relationships as they finally adapted to the external situation.
Parent-children relationships have become the most common issue for our over-the-phone experts. Calls were coming both from parents and children, most of whom were teenagers. The variety of issues included loss of rapport; emotional indifference of parents towards their offsprings (as described by children); full exposure of parents to their personal or professional issues; lack of understanding of children’s problems. Four children from single-parent families (3 boys and 1 girl) living with their mothers have displayed will to move to their fathers’.
Parents in turn have faced the necessity to deal with non-predictable behavior coming from their children. This comprised rude way of communication; aggression towards having to follow the rules of quarantine; drinking problems etc. Extreme concern was induced by 3 cases of suicidal behavior and 2 cases of attempts of suicide, reported by the parents of 18 and 19 year-old boys.
A significant percent of complaints was expressed by people blaming their partners for not providing appropriate upbringing to their joint children. These were mostly coming from divorced parents.
Many of those addressing the service have complained about the necessity to handle their problems themselves, considering the lack of relevant state-level services.
The majority of mothers have displayed concern about the ineptitude of modern children to manage their own emotions, as well as to build interpersonal relationships including those with opposite sex etc.
Many believed it is due to the absence of psychological disciplines at schools, that teenagers experience difficulties adapting socially.
A vast number of cases has revealed that inter-family relationships proved to be not that tight during isolation.
Senior citizens have been involved, too, since some conflicts included 3 generations. A common scenario covered grandparents unsatisfied with their grandchildren’s behavior, and parents standing up for their children, provoking further aggression.
A part of the calls received dealt with emotional instability, including fear of getting sick; depression; excessive monitoring of symptoms; temperature screening obsession; obsession with receiving constant updates on epidemic etc.
The situation has thus disclosed the demand for psychology practitioners. It has also been observed that calls have become more frequent, owing to the fact that many decide to ignore their problems until the situation has become unbearable.
See telephone numbers of the Centre for Spiritual and Psychological Counseling below:
0638964616; 0992729631 – psychologists,
0508060641; 0969296597 – Priest Mykhailo.