Existential Anxiety of Ukrainian Students under Martial Law 0 0
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32999/2663-970X/2026-16-5Keywords:
existential fears, ontological anxiety, post-traumatic symptomatology, fear of identity loss, fear of loneliness, psychological counselingAbstract
The aim of the study is to empirically identify the specificity of the structure of existential anxiety among Ukrainian students with different profiles of post-traumatic and clinical symptomatology and, on this basis, to substantiate differentiated targets of psychological counseling. Methods.
The sample consisted of young adults (n = 109; M = 19.86; SD = 1.82), including 63 women (57.8%) and 46 men (42.2%). The Existential Concerns Questionnaire (Kuchyna, 2020) and the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (Krupelnytska et al., 2025) were administered in their Ukrainian adaptations, together with the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (Zigmond & Snaith, 1983). The design was cross-sectional, comparative, and correlational: Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients were computed, the sample was split into contrasting groups by the median of five symptom markers, and between-group differences were assessed using the Mann–Whitney U test with effect sizes. Results. Clinically significant post-traumatic distress was recorded in 56.9% of participants. Fear of death dominated the hierarchy of existential concerns (M = 2.88). All correlations were positive and significant (rs = .311-.680; p < .001), the strongest being between clinical anxiety and fear of identity loss (rs = .680; p < .001). All twenty group comparisons were significant (p ≤ .040), with effect sizes ranging from r = .20 to r = .58. The avoidance cluster proved the most informative marker: large effect sizes were recorded across all scales (r = .50-.58), peaking for fear of identity loss. Fear of death led to the intrusion and hyperarousal profiles; clinical anxiety produced a uniform elevation of three components; in the depressive profile, fear of loneliness was the only component of medium effect size (r = .33) and the only one comparably represented in both clinical registers. The post-traumatic clusters surpassed the clinical subscales in differentiating power.
Discussion and conclusions. The structure of existential anxiety differs significantly by symptom type, and the leading components of concern do not coincide across contrasting groups. Standard screening for anxiety and depression yields the least differentiated picture, which argues for extending the diagnostic protocol in counseling. The identified configurations outline differentiated targets of assistance: restoring self-continuity in the avoidance profile, legitimizing death anxiety in the intrusion and hyperarousal profile, and relationally oriented work in the depressive profile.
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