"I can't imagine the money I'll have to spend on therapy"

So said Tata Marharian, of the Ukrainian Volunteer Medical Battalion

In a Thursday CNN interview, Tata Marharian, a paramedic who works with the Ukrainian Volunteer Medical Battalion, talked about her work pulling life from the death visited upon her country.

Marharian had been quoted earlier talking about the dead children she’d seen. In Thursday’s interview, she breathed deeply and at one point, said she couldn’t imagine the amount of money she’d have to spend on therapy when the invasion was stopped. Then she laughed. Then she apologized for laughing.

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“You have the feeling that you have nowhere to hide, probably. And you have nowhere to run.” Tata Marharian, a Ukrainian volunteer medic, says she doesn’t know how much longer she can go on hearing the news of her friends and loved ones being captured and dying.

In 2020, the World Health Organization chose Ukraine as a priority country for their Special Initiative for Mental Health. In an early report, WHO said Ukraine was a priority because much of the mental health challenges had been passed down from the Soviet era, as had its mental health care system, which included human rights violations. The country, prior to the invasion, had a higher-than-average amount of alcoholism, suicide, and depression. In fact, one report said that one in three Ukrainians will suffer a mental health disorder at some point in their life.

The mental health care system was slowly being modernized, but the pandemic slowed that down, and then Putin invaded the country.

The paramedic is right. There is no way to calculate the mental health costs for this country, and if we want to help — truly help — we’ll put some significant U.S. dollars into the future mental health of the Ukrainians. If we want to help — truly help — we’ll put significant U.S. dollars into the future health of ourselves, as well.