Authors
Gea Dunnik¹, Wendy Weijts^2,3
1Praktijk Voor Psychotherapie Oosterbeek, Oosterbeek, Netherlands
²GGZ Noord Holland-Noord, Heerhugowaard, Netherlands
³Praktijk voor Psychotherapie & Trauma


Background and aims
Background: Due to the war in Ukraine, the demand for psychological support has increased enormously.
Aim: How to manage this, when general mental health care is already overloaded and long waiting lists are a reality.

Methods
-Through the use of social media, the WorldPsychologists organization has been able to reach a huge number of psychologists who want to make a voluntary contribution to provide psychological help and support to Ukrainian refugees.
--Co-organizing of an EMDR training for Ukrainian psychologists who are on the run or who are still staying in Ukraine and work on the spot with traumatized compatriots.

Results
Every day there are registrations of refugees. The refugees are matched by our triage team with a psychologist who offers free online professional care, for as long and as often as necessary.

Conclusions
An enormous solidarity has ensured that the WP organization has been able to develop into an NGO that provides effective and free psychological help to refugees, whereby prevention of long-term complaints is an important motivation. EMDR is possible but not always necessary during the first aid mental health phase.

Abstract topic
After the outbreak of the war, the Netherlands took in 90,000 refugees. After the appeal of the WP-Organization on social media, psychologists have registered en masse to provide psychological support for these refugees.

3 Learning objectives
-Powerlessness gives motivation and commitment to join forces.
-When all psychologists do voluntary work for 1 hour a week, a lot can be achieved
-EMDR is possible but not always necessary during the first aid mental health phase