Mental health in Germany in the first weeks of the Russo-Ukrainian war
Open accessAbstract
Background: In the connected world, although societies are not directly involved in a military conflict, they are exposed to media reports of violence. Aims: We assessed the effects of such exposures on mental health in Germany during the military conflict in Ukraine. Method: We used the German population-based cohort for digital health research, DigiHero, launching a survey on the eighth day of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Of the 27 509 cohort participants from the general population, 19 444 (70.7%) responded within 17 days. We measured mental health and fear of the impact of war compared with other fears (natural disasters or health-related). Results: In a subsample of 4441 participants assessed twice, anxiety in the population (measured by the Generalised Anxiety Disorder-7 screener) was higher in the first weeks of war than during the strongest COVID-19 restrictions. Anxiety was elevated across the whole age spectrum, and the mean was above the cut-off for mild anxiety. Over 95% of participants expressed various degrees of fear of the impact of war, whereas the percentage for other investigated fears was 0.47–0.82. A one-point difference in the fear of the impact of war was associated with a 2.5 point (95% CI 2.42–2.58) increase in anxiety (11.9% of the maximum anxiety score). For emotional distress, the increase was 0.67 points (0.66–0.68) (16.75% of the maximum score). Conclusions: The population in Germany reacted to the Russo-Ukrainian war with substantial distress, exceeding reactions during the strongest restrictions in the COVID-19 pandemic. Fear of the impact of war was associated with worse mental health.
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War-related uncertainty, particularly media-induced exposure to conflict, has significantly augmented levels of stress, anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress in Czech, Slovak, German, Polish, Italian, and even Taiwanese populations.
“Recent research highlights that war-related uncertainty, particularly media-induced exposure to conflict, has significantly augmented levels of stress, anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress in Czech, Slovak, German, Polish, Italian, and even Taiwanese populations [55,81-83].”
From Impact of Media-Induced Uncertainty on Mental Health: Narrative-Based Perspective. (2025) · cites this paper as [81]
The Results report that, among participants in Germany, greater fear of the war’s impact was associated with higher anxiety, depressive symptoms, stress, and emotional distress. The Strengths and limitations section says media exposure was not measured, so the study does not establish a media-induced effect; it also does not report increased posttraumatic stress. The other countries in the multi-citation sentence are outside this paper’s study. (LLM, conf=0.89)
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- Authors
- Gottschick, C., Diexer, S., Massag, J., Klee, B., Broda, A., Purschke, O., Binder, M., Sedding, D., Frese, T., Girndt, M., Hoell, J. I., Michl, P., Gekle, M., & Mikolajczyk, R.
- Affiliations
- Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Mikolajczyk, Rafael
- ORCID
- Venue
- BJPsych Open
- Publisher
- Royal College of Psychiatrists
- Published
- 2023-04-14
- Volume
- 9
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- e66-e66
- ISSN
- 2056-4724 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC10134205
- OpenAlex
- W4365479240
- Cited by
- 35
- References
- 28
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 5
- FWCI
- 10.20
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- BJPsych Open (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › COVID-19 and Mental Health
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health and Conflict Studies
- Keywords
- Russian invasion of Ukraine, mental health, anxiety, fear of war, emotional distress, COVID-19 restrictions, Germany
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