The Emotional Sphere of Women Staying in the Anti-Terrorist Operation Zone for a Long Time

Abstract

In Ukraine, an anti-terrorist operation, carried out on a significant territory of the country (about 20 percent) has been going on for eight years. All this time, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians stay in stressful conditions. Changes occur in cognitive, behavioral, value-motivational, emotional and other spheres of these people personality. One of the risk groups is middle-aged people, because the key tasks for this stage of a person's life become difficult to implement. In women, the emotional component of this process is more intense than in men, which becomes an additional stress factor in this situation. There are studies on the emotional component in interpersonal relationships in these women, their tendency to affect, the consequences of receiving traumatic experience, impulsiveness, etc. However, the number of studies on the peculiarities of basic emotions manifestation, level indicators of anxiety, aggressiveness and other components of the emotional sphere remains insignificant, which would make it possible to develop appropriate psychocorrective programs. The purpose of the study was to identify the features of emotional sphere in middle-aged women who have been in the area of anti-terrorist operation (ATO) for a long time. Research methods – a technique for measuring the level of anxiety (J. Taylor), a scale of differential emotions (K. Izard), a technique for detecting the level of aggressiveness (Bassa-Darky). Mathematical and statistical processing - φ-criterion Fisher's angular transformation. The subjects were 40 middle-aged women employed with higher education. They are divided into two groups of 20: according to the criterion, they were in the area of anti-terrorist operation (ATO) for a long time and had never been in the specified territory. Conclusions: for the emotional sphere of middle-aged women who have been for a long time (at least 5 years) in the area of anti-terrorist operation (ATO), the phenomena of "level decrease of emotions of the positive spectrum" and "level increase of aggressiveness" and a high general level of anxiety are characteristic. In the anxiety-depressive spectrum of the emotional sphere, guilt becomes the dominant emotion. There is a tendency to increase more open forms of aggressiveness, but the manifestation of anger, on the contrary, is becoming more moderate.