Clinical psychologist and UNCG Social Work professor Dr. Viktor Burlaka has dedicated more than 20 years to improving mental health in vulnerable populations—a passion that began after earning his bachelor’s degree in Kyiv, Ukraine.
While earning his master’s degree, Burlaka worked in hospitals with babies and children born to mothers with substance use disorders.
He also advocated to improve the treatment of the children while they were in hospitals, so the babies and children were not immobile and confined to beds, allowing time to sit up and move.
Burlaka continued this work until 2009, when he decided to earn his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan.
“I’d never been to the United States, but I decided to take a chance,” he said. “I went from Kyiv and a city of 6 million people to cornfields in Ann Arbor.”
While a student in Michigan, Burlaka got an NIH (National Institutes of Health) grant to train 100 scientists to continue the work he began in Ukraine, and to launch their own research.
“I started more studies looking at families and children,” Burlaka said.
The Russia-Ukraine war began in 2014. In 2021, Burlaka’s expertise in social work and psychology skills became more critical. He was requested to train psychologists and first responders—police, firefighters, and other frontline workers—in evidence-based interventions such as cognitive processing therapy, mindfulness, and relaxation techniques. Burlaka was still able to travel to Ukraine at the time.
We would do one week of immersive training, to live and study together, and learn evidence-based intervention. We would do networking and support as a team. They would practice and write down their own traumas they had experienced.
Dr. Viktor Burlaka
Burlaka continued traveling to Ukraine to conduct trainings until 2022, when the Russian invasion made it no longer safe. Two Ukrainians Burlaka previously trained continued working with first responders in the country, with Burlaka joining the training remotely.
“I was hoping to just do one group of training with first responders, and from 2021 through May 2025, I ended up with 13 groups, totaling 330 people,” he said.
The first responders participating in the training for free were selected by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The goal is to ease the burden on Ukrainian psychologists, who have heavy caseloads, made heavier by the years of war.
“The goal is for these people to have a conversation with someone about a traumatic event that happened in a structured way,” Burlaka said. “In Ukraine, it’s estimated that more than 5 million people have PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). The people we’ve trained are just a drop in the ocean for who needs help.”
The goal is for these people to have a conversation with someone about a traumatic event that happened in a structured way.
Dr. Viktor Burlaka
“I worked with several colleges and did projects to do rehabilitation. When I did the initial work in hospitals, I saw that basic diagnosing was very bad. I thought, ‘it would be great to create a new standard,’” Burlaka said. “I worked with the moms. The doctors would take the child and send them to a hospital for treatment and tell the mom they would get a ‘healthy new child.’ We changed the way doctors talked about the child, to improve the health of the child.”
In March, Burlaka was selected by the American University in Kyiv to create the Business Psychology Department for a program which began this fall, with Burlaka as the director. Students at the university are required to be fluent in English, as the university uses American textbooks.
“It is the only university in Ukraine to teach psychology with American textbooks, that were not translated, ensuring the information is as current as possible,” Burlaka said. “We started with a cohort of 10 students.”
Meanwhile, Burlaka continues his own research, studying how psychologists cope with their own feelings while listening to others discuss trauma daily while in war zones.
“This will inform the interventions we will do later on,” he said, adding he’s talked to 900 psychologists thus far. “I’m trying to popularize military psychology. We’re showing and setting a new standard and that there’s a new way.”
By Sarah Newell