Does escaping a war zone feel worse than being there? War and coping by Ukrainian civilians in Ukraine and Poland

<p dir="ltr">Objective: While the factors facilitating and compromising stress-coping by civilians in an active war zone and those who have fled it are critical to the experiences of trauma, they are under-explored, which the current paper aims to address. Method: Between March 23rd and May 15th of 2023, 122 Ukraine-based and 132 Poland-based Ukrainian participants completed a survey measuring different aspects of trauma, social beliefs and coping. Results: Compared to the war zone civilians, the Poland-based refugees scored significantly higher in terms of general war repercussions, peritraumatic experiences, PTSD symptoms, loneliness, anxiety about the loved ones and chemical/biological/missile/drone attack anxiety. While no differences between them were found in terms of other factors, regression and SEM analyses suggests that the general well-being was compromised in both samples by lower sensation-seeking, higher loneliness, higher fantasy-proneness, lower expected support from the West, and higher expected Chinese and Iranian support for Russia. Religiosity did not play a role. Conclusions: While the role of perceived social support (at the levels of friends and family) turned out to be limited, the (broader) expected support (from the West) played a more significant role. Additionally, our exploratory Civilian War Trauma Structural Equation Model suggests that anxiety interacts with the individual's overall vulnerability, thus exacerbating the psychological impact of war.</p>