Complex PTSD
After the Blast, a Soldier Learns to Sleep Again
Ukraine's Vsesylni clinic treats the brain, body, and wounds no one can see.
Posted July 15, 2026 Reviewed by Lybi Ma
Key points
- Art therapy can open doors that words cannot.
- Blast injuries need teams, not single specialists.
- For a traumatized brain, sleep is a major victory.
The Man Everyone Thought Was Dead
For three days after a landmine blast near Bakhmut, Sasha lay unconscious. He had been so gravely wounded that he was thought dead. He regained consciousness inside a black body bag in a morgue. Sasha — not his real name — was injured in May 2023. The explosion caused severe facial injuries and traumatic brain injury. By the time he arrived at Vsesylni, a rehabilitation clinic in Odesa, he had endured six operations. One side of his face was partly paralyzed, and he was so self-conscious about his appearance that he was on his way to becoming a recluse.
The damage that could not be seen was equally disabling. He had headaches, tinnitus, insomnia, depression, and an intense sensitivity to light, all common after traumatic brain injury. "He is a very strong man," said Olga Peskova, founder of Vsesylni. But strength had not taught his injured brain how to become quiet.
A Key to Accepting Mental Health Support
Like many Ukrainian servicemen, Sasha was not eager to accept psychotherapy. Because of the abuse of psychiatry under the Soviets, who used psychiatry as a tool of political repression and confined dissidents in hospitals, psychotherapy in Ukraine carries a lingering reputation as an instrument of control rather than care.
Peskova has found, however, that some soldiers who are reluctant to get mental health support will accept physical rehabilitation, massage, or treatment for scars — and once they feel safe, this opens the door to mental health care. For Sasha, that door opened during an art therapy session led by Rosie Cecil, Vsesylni's head of international partnerships. The soldiers had been asked to create mandalas — circular, often colorful designs that can provide a calming focus for reflection.
In both Peskova's and Cecil's experience, art can be especially useful when people aren't yet able to put into words what they are going through. A person who cannot yet talk about an unbearable memory may be able to express it indirectly through color, shape, and symbol.
The colors of Sasha's mandala were red and black. Peskova, watching him work, understood what those colors meant to him: red for blood, black for death. What he could not yet say aloud, his hands had said for him. It was also clear to her that he would need psychotherapy — and, crucially, that enough trust had now been established that he would be willing to accept it.
Treating the Whole Injury
Patients at the clinic can stay for 14 days. During that time, Sasha saw psychotherapists, a neurologist, and physiotherapists, and took part in group therapy. He also received transcranial magnetic stimulation and EEG neurofeedback—what Peskova calls "gymnastics for the brain and nervous system," a description that turns out to be more literal than it sounds.
In a neurofeedback session, specialists placed small sensors on Sasha's scalp to pick up his brain's electrical activity, or brainwaves. The sensors pick up important clues. A traumatic brain injury can throw the brain's rhythms out of balance, trapping the brain in states of hyperarousal, with too many fast, agitated waves driving anxiety and sleeplessness, or in the slow, foggy patterns associated with depression.
During the neurofeedback sessions, a computer translated whatever his brain was doing into something he could see on a screen and hear in real time: a video that brightens or dims, a tone that rises or falls. Ideally, over repeated sessions, the brain can notice the connection between its own activity and the feedback it receives and begin to adjust. The underlying principle is neuroplasticity, the brain's capacity to rewire itself. Sasha’s neurofeedback sessions were designed to help with the rewiring.
Peskova feels that the evidence for neurofeedback and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation after traumatic brain injury has not yet been declared proven. Still, in her experience, it’s promising enough to use, and in many cases like Sasha’s, she’s seen the benefits.
Some of what Vsesylni does may not yet be proven; however, the overall principle behind everything the clinic does is well-established: a brain injury that touches sleep, mood, cognition, and the body all at once cannot be handed off to a single specialist and called treated. U.S. military and veterans' guidelines have reached the same conclusion: Soldiers with chronic, overlapping symptoms tend to fare better under a coordinated, team-based plan.
The reasoning for this approach is clear. Pain disrupts sleep. Lost sleep undermines mood and the ability to think. A disfigured face drives a man indoors, away from the human contact that might otherwise help him heal. And psychological trauma can make physical pain feel worse than it is. The multi-therapy approach worked for Sasha.
"I'm Sleeping Now"
At the end of the program, Sasha gave Peskova an encouraging report: "I'm sleeping now." He also said his headaches had stopped and the noise in his injured ear had subsided. The man who once awakened among the dead is not finished healing. However, both Peskova and Cecil have seen that Sasha has begun to believe again that living is worth it.
