MHG co-founder Mitzi Perdue reports for Psychology Today on one of the most unexpected institutions in Ukraine’s mental health landscape: the National War Museum in Kyiv, which documents the war in real time — its teams sometimes reaching liberated areas within hours — while also running psychological support programs for those the war has wounded.
The museum’s psychologists have supported more than 700 children, wounded soldiers and their families, and people released from captivity, using a creativity-based recovery model. Mitzi’s reporting follows one of its most moving programs: a five-session animation workshop where children’s drawings evolve from tanks and explosions toward bicycles, pets, and clear skies — the quiet return of a capacity for joy.
It is a portrait of exactly the reality MHG builds for: a country meeting an ocean of psychological need with ingenuity, and far too few clinicians.