Shared traumatic reality has nagative professional effects on mental health providers. The study explores the professional effects of prolonged shared traumatic reality, and the protective role of intergenerational transfer, among Ukrainian psychotherapists during the war with Russia, in the context of their national history of traumatic events. We conducted focus group interviews with 20 Ukrainian therapists who lived and worked in Ukrainian war zones.

What factors contribute to building resiliency? This paper discusses the salient literature on childhood trauma and severe trauma including resiliency. The discussion is interwoven with the author’s own experience growing up in a totalitarian setting, as a second-generation child of survivors of World War II. Chief protective factors building resiliency include positive identifications and close family ties. Her later mastery, through becoming an analyst, was a key sublimation.

Exposure to human evil, referring to malevolent deeds that deliberately inflict suffering or death, can be psychologically traumatic. This study examined self-perceived evil-related threats within the conception of hostile-world scenario (HWS) that signifies one’s mental representation of major threats in life. The study explored whether evil-related threats, along with HWS, differentiated Holocaust survivors from comparisons, and how these concepts related to mental health.

Holocaust survivors often reveal long-term depressive symptoms, while demonstrating life satisfaction. The present study examined the role of meaning in life (MIL) of Holocaust survivors in this context. Survivors (n = 44) and comparisons (n = 51) provided background information and completed MIL, depressive symptoms, and life satisfaction scales. MIL was associated with lower depressive symptoms and higher life satisfaction. Moreover, the MIL-depressive symptoms/life satisfaction links were stronger among Holocaust survivors.