NSW town may hold key for millions of Ukrainians needing mental support

Antonina Pushko says specialists in Ukraine are facing unprecedented demand for services. (ABC News: Genevieve Blandin de Chalain)

Ukrainian mental health specialists have come to Armidale to learn new strategies for war trauma response and rehabilitation.

Experts say the region is uniquely placed to assist the specialists due to its refugee population and experience of natural disasters.

Upon their return to Ukraine in June, specialists hope the hands-on training will strengthen frontline capacity to support the mental health of millions affected by the full-scale war.

Four years into the full-scale war, Ukraine is grappling with a mental health crisis.

Research from the International Rescue Committee from April this year estimates 15 million people in Ukraine need psychological support.

At the coalface of the mass traumatisation is psychiatrist Antonina Pushko.

Dr Pushko, along with six other mental health specialists, made the long journey from Ivano-Frankivsk in regional Ukraine to Australia as part of a government-funded program in pursuit of new strategies to help the collective mental health of her nation.

Ukrainian residents evacuated from a house heavily damaged after a Russian strike on a neighbourhood in Kyiv in May. (AP: Evgeniy Maloletka)

"[The] number of the moral injuries among the civilians is very high because mostly everyone from the civilians has a family member who is serving in the army."

More than 15,000 kilometres away from Ukraine's front line, in Armidale in New South Wales's New England region, local clinicians are well-poised to assist their Ukrainian counterparts.

Clinicians in New England towns hit by fire, flood and drought often treat patients for trauma they too have experienced. (ABC News: Paige Cockburn)

Armidale is one of Australia's 24 designated refugee settlement area.

Since 2018, hundreds of refugees from Iraq, Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have made Armidale home.

Many have escaped harrowing war crimes and traumatic living conditions.

Armidale is home to almost 20 per cent of Australia's Ezidi community, also referred to as Yazidi.

Along with the refugee population, mental health specialists in the region are often tasked to treat patients for stresses they too are experiencing, such as drought, fires and floods.

In Ukraine, Dr Pushko said, clinicians in the war zone were struggling to provide treatment in such unsafe environments.

"Sometimes we have an air alarm at night, and for example a mental health specialist, psychiatrist, has not slept and he is coming to his room to consu