{"id":4358,"date":"2022-04-07T16:20:21","date_gmt":"2022-04-07T20:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/?p=4358"},"modified":"2022-04-18T19:14:43","modified_gmt":"2022-04-18T23:14:43","slug":"ukraine-war-takes-toll-on-students-mental-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/2022\/04\/ukraine-war-takes-toll-on-students-mental-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine War Takes Toll On Students\u2019 Mental Health"},"content":{"rendered":"

Featured image by @newyorknico on Instagram<\/em><\/p>\n

On Feb. 24, at around 10 p.m., Sima Sadykhov arrived home after work when her brother told her that Russia invaded Ukraine. Sadykhov said she had never felt such sorrow before.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sadykhov\u2019s mom\u2019s side of the family is Russian, and she has distant family, cousins and uncles, living in Ukraine \u2014 or rather used to, as now they have fled to surrounding countries in hopes of saving themselves. Avoiding social media for the following weeks would have been best for her mental health, but she couldn\u2019t bring herself to detach from her phone.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSeeing everything on social media, it is a lot,\u201d Sadykhov said. \u201cEven though it is a good way to inform people, at some point it became too much for me, and I had to delete instagram because the updates on the situation stressed me.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Just like Sadykhov, students\u2019 mental health is suffering, and, according to the <\/span>American Psychological Association<\/span><\/a>, experiencing the same levels of mental stress as when COVID-19 hit. The polls found that \u201c84% of U.S. adults agreed the Russian invasion has been terrifying to watch.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For the last two years, students have been dealing with extreme fear as a cause of the pandemic, and now with the events in Ukraine, experiencing dramatically high levels of mental stress. The <\/span>American Council on Education<\/span><\/a> reported that college presidents at public four-year institutions pinpointed \u201cmental health of students” as their most pressing issue.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

More than 1,700 Ukrainian students studied in the U.S. during the last fiscal year, according to <\/span>Open Doors data<\/span><\/a>. Nearly 750 <\/span>CUNY<\/span><\/a> students are of Ukrainian ancestry and 25 with a home address in Ukraine.<\/span><\/p>\n

One Greek-Russian student that a reporter talked to said he\u2019s been having trouble sleeping since the war began and his father asked him to refrain from speaking Russian in public for safety reasons.<\/span><\/p>\n

In an <\/span>online post<\/span><\/a>, Chancellor Felix V. Matos <\/span>Rodr\u00edguez<\/span> acknowledged the \u201ccomplicated feelings of anxiety and grief\u201d that Ukrainian students are experiencing and offered resources including\u00a0<\/span>counseling<\/span><\/a>, emergency financial grants and other <\/span>services<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hunter faculty members are reaching out to their Ukrainian students to offer support.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been talking with them and they\u2019re very torn between what to feel because most of them have relatives, sometimes immediate relatives in Ukraine, and they are very anxious,\u201d said Assistant Professor Yasha Klots, who teaches Russian literature.<\/span><\/p>\n

Junior Daniil Frolov is one of the students that is very worried about his family in the Ukraine.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI am trying to juggle keeping up with the family and doing what I can to help,\u201d he said. \u201cIt makes it harder to focus especially during midterm season while simultaneously trying to see if my family is alright.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt makes it harder to focus especially during midterm season while trying to see if my family is alright,\u201d Daniil Frolov said about his struggles as a Hunter student during the Ukrainian war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":4364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[279,483,388,481,482],"class_list":["post-4358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-huntercollege-hunterstudents","tag-russianstudents","tag-studentmentalhealth","tag-ukrainewar","tag-ukrainianstudents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4358"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4367,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4358\/revisions\/4367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}