Brief Mindfulness-SOS for Ukrainians:
Mission, Strategic Plan & Projects Operations

I. THE UKRAINIAN HUMANITARIAN & MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS: WE MUST ACT NOW
As of April 6, more than 11 million Ukrainians have been forcibly displaced due to the violence, atrocities and tragic injustice of the invasion. Despite the extraordinary collective courage and resilience of the Ukrainian people, a mental health crisis is fast-emerging from the trauma, stress, and tragic injustice of the invasion and refugee crisis.
II. A GLOBAL COALITION: RISING UP TO RESIST INJUSTICE IN UKRAINE
In close alliance with the Ukrainian refugee community, the Moments of Refuge Project at the University of Haifa has partnered with Global Empowerment Mission, Pandemic of Love, and Mindful.org. Together, we have launched the Moments of Refuge for Ukraine. Our mission is to empower forcibly displaced Ukrainians to begin to heal and recover, and thereby to help prevent the destructive long-term consequences of forced displacement for families and communities. We aspire to empower and impact the mental health of internally-displaced Ukrainians as well as Ukrainian refugees throughout E. Europe and around the world.
III. THE MOMENTS OF REFUGE PROJECT: CLINICAL SCIENCE WITH A SOCIAL JUSTICE MISSION
Since 2010, our research group at the University of Haifa has worked in close alliance with forcibly displaced communities and NGOs that serve them. We have worked to bring the most ambitious, rigorous and compassionate science that we can envision to empower and support refugees to heal from the trauma and injustice of forced displacement. This led to the development of Mindfulness-Based Trauma Recovery for Refugees – a mindfulness-based intervention that is trauma-sensitive and socio-culturally adapted for diverse forcibly displaced people and contexts post-displacement. The intervention model is designed to empower and enable forcibly displaced people to experience moments of refuge and safety in their own minds and bodies in the short-term, and thereby facilitate the process of recovery and healing post-displacement to unfold in the long-term.
We carried out randomized clinical trial research to optimize, test and establish the intervention program’s safety, efficacy, feasibility and scalability. We found strong evidence of the safety, therapeutic efficacy and feasibility of MBTR-R, for even the most vulnerable forcibly displaced people (e.g. survivors of torture, human trafficking, former child soldiers). These findings are exciting not only because of its efficacy and therapeutic impact, but because intervention model is also low-cost, disseminable, and scalable, and thereby well-suited to the diverse and complex realities of forcibly displaced people.
IV. UKRAINIAN REFUGEE RECOVERY INITIATIVE: THREE PHRASES & IMPACT GOALS
Phase I. Intervention To deliver our mindfulness-based intervention model to vulnerable forcibly displaced Ukrainians in order to alleviate common trauma- and stress-related mental health outcomes of forced displacement including posttraumatic stress, depression and anxiety. The intervention will be delivered in two modalities: (i) A flexible mobile-health technology (Mindfulness-SOS), developed and tested during the COVID-19 crisis, to ensure broad reach and access of the intervention among the most isolated and vulnerable refugees, as well as implementation flexibility and geographic mobility; (ii) A more intensive, although brief and low-cost, group-based intervention delivery format that provides more intensive instruction and support.
Phase II. Prevention By empowering and enabling Ukrainian refugees to heal and recover post-displacement through the mindfulness-based intervention, we aim to prevent the destructive consequence of forced displacement for individual health (e.g. suicide prevention), for families (e.g. intimate-partner violence prevention), for children (e.g. prevent inter-generational transmission of trauma and stress), and for Ukrainian communities (e.g. prevent fragmentation of community resilience and social capital).
Phase III. Social Impact Multiplier To use our mindfulness-based intervention model in order to augment, and thereby amplify the efficacy and impact, of other policies and programs designed to achieve social justice and mobility among forcibly displaced Ukrainians. Because mental health problems post-displacement are a barrier to benefit from social justice and mobility policies and programs, the social impact of targeting mental health in this way may be exponential.
Helping the Helpers To support these efforts, our coalition is also bringing evidence-based tools (Helping the Helpers) to support and empower field workers and volunteers exposed to direct and vicarious trauma as well as stress of the crisis and work with Ukrainian forcibly displaced people and families. This is important to ensure that they are able to provide the sort of support to forcibly displaced Ukrainians that they need now and are likely to need for many months to come.
V. SUPPORT UKRAINIAN REFUGEES
We need your urgent help to launch, develop and scale-up the Ukrainian Refugee Recovery Initiative. We are now working to raise an initial $1 million, to support the initial months of the initiative. We hope to identify partners who identify with our mission and evidence-based strategy to transform the lives and communities of Ukrainian refugees around the world. If you like to discuss how you may join us, please contact the director of the Moments of Refuge Project, Professor Amit Bernstein at the University of Haifa: abernstein@psy.haif.ac.il.