PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF YOUTH PARTICIPATION IN THE COMPREHENSIVE REHABILITATION OF MILITARY PERSONNEL WITH COMBAT EXPERIENCE

Abstract

The article provides a theoretical substantiation of the psychological and social potential of youth participation in the comprehensive rehabilitation of military personnel – participants in combat operations. The relevance of the study is determined by the need to strengthen the social component of combatants’ rehabilitation and to identify psychologically safe forms of their interaction with civilian community. The aim is to substantiate the psychological and social potential of youth participation in comprehensive rehabilitation and to develop a model of bidirectional subject-to-subject intergenerational interaction between combatants and young people. The study employs theoretical and comparative analysis, generalization, systematization, and conceptual modelling. Analysis of Ukrainian and international research on veteran social reintegration, social connection, narrative meaning-making of military experience, civic and patriotic development of youth, and intergenerational transmission of experience reveals a research gap: interaction between combatants and young people remains insufficiently conceptualized as a bidirectional psychological process. An authorial model is proposed in which mutual subjectivity constitutes the system-forming principle. At the theoretical level, four interrelated psychological mechanisms are distinguished: social recognition, narrativization and meaning integration of experience, identification, and value-and-meaning reflection. Dialogical, activity-based, project-based, and mentoring forms of interaction are outlined together with the conditions required for psychologically safe implementation. The age range of 15–22 years is operationally defined as covering the transition from late adolescence to the early stage of emerging adulthood, a period characterized by intensive identity, value-and-meaning, worldview, and civic self-determination. Potential outcomes are considered at three interconnected levels: the combatant, the young person, and society. The conceptual distinction of the model lies in shifting from a one-way logic of influence to bidirectional intergenerational interaction. Such interaction may create conditions for combatants’ social reintegration, social recognition, and maintenance of an active subject position, while simultaneously providing a space for young people’s value-and-meaning reflection, civic identity development, worldview formation, and patriotic development. The model is theoretical and requires further empirical testing, including evaluation of psychological readiness, age-specific formats, safety conditions, and outcomes for both groups.