The problem of psychological help to a person in the face of modern challenges

Spring 2020 Lessons

Abstract

The problem of psychological help to a person in the context of modern challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, is considered from the point of view of compliance of this help's content to the public demand for it. The article aims to substantiate the need for a specific revision of traditional targets and traditional practices of psychological care due to the challenges that arise in the modern world. Reconstruction of the public request for psychological help is carried out according to the mass surveys conducted under the author's leadership: a nationwide representative study, which covered 1202 people aged from 18 y.o. and older, and an online survey conducted directly during the spring lockdown 2020, which involved 565 respondents. The analysis also includes data from other studies conducted during this period and following its "hot tracks." The article emphasizes that Ukrainian psychologists have shown significant professional activity since the corona crisis. Still, the effectiveness of their efforts was reduced by the fact that these efforts were exposed to barriers of both objective and subjective terms. In the psychological community, the default model of a person in a lockdown is focused on the psychological help implementation in the traditional content field of the individual (personality-oriented), marital, and family counseling. This model determined the main trend of psychologists' counseling activity in media and social networks, but, according to the obtained data, it did not fully meet the realities of life of Ukrainian citizens, the challenges of the information environment in which they were, and therefore their real needs. It is argued that global cataclysms such as the COVID-19 pandemic radically change the nature and principles of the psychologist's practical work, as they sharply shift the focus of their counseling activity from the usual axial to the retial communication systems. It is shown that the semantic field of psychological counseling in the conditions of modern challenges should be supplemented by at least two components – media-psychological and psychological-organizational. The need to launch a targeted state program to monitor mass sentiment and the psycho-emotional state of society is substantiated. The study's practical significance is to use its results and conclusions to improve psychological assistance to the population. Prospects for further development of the problem are seen in the definition of supervisory and technological prerequisites for expanding the content field of psychological counseling.