On February 24, 2022, the Russian-Ukrainian war began, in which hundreds of thousands of military personnel are participating. Almost all military personnel experience combat stress. In our opinion, the most fully reflecting the occurrence of stress in humans, including combat stress in military personnel, is the conservation of resource theory proposed by S. Hobfoll. According to this theory, stress occurs when: central or key resources (health, well-being, family, self-esteem, and a sense of purpose and meaning in life) are threatened with loss, are lost, or cannot be retrieved following significant effort. Combat stress in military personnel can manifest itself in the form of negative manifestations of the psychological, physical, psychophysiological, and behavioral register. The most effective system for the prevention and control of combat stress among military personnel was developed in the US Army. Such a program should contain medical and psychological work activities carried out in three stages: preparatory (before performing combat missions), the stage of direct performance of tasks in the combat zone, and the final stage (after completing tasks upon returning to permanent deployment points).
Since February 24, 2022, military personnel of the Ukrainian Defense Forces have been resisting the military aggression of the Russian Federation. The fighting and the mobilization of men for military service complicated the well-being of Ukrainian families. The purpose of the article is to identify the relationship between the choice of coping strategies and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and maladaptation indicators in married and unmarried mobilized military personnel. Ukrainian Defense Forces military personnel (n=171 males, between 20 and 60 years of age) took part in this study. The “Strategic Approach to Coping Scale”, “Mississippi Scale for Combat-Related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder”, and “Disadaptation Express Questionnaire” were used. Correlation and exploratory factor analysis made it possible to identify the structure of coping strategies in mobilized servicemen with different family statuses and to determine the relationships between coping strategies, PTSD, and maladaptation indicators. The pre-war experience of using coping strategies by married and unmarried mobilized military personnel was not a sufficient barrier to the emergence of PTSD symptoms and maladaptation manifestations. Married and unmarried mobilized servicemen had a deficit structure of coping strategies characteristic of war.
