EMPIRICAL PARAMETERS FOR ATO PARTICIPANTS’ PSYCHOTHERAPY

Psychological assistance to combatants is perhaps one of the most important tasks of modern psychologists. That is why in this article the results of the psychological examination of ATO participants have been highlighted and com-pared with ordinary people, and correlation and comparative analysis of empirical data has been performed. The inter-relation between self-esteem, personal and situational anxiety, depression and aggressiveness has been revealed. Some psychological features (such as self-esteem, personal and situational anxiety, depression and aggressiveness) of the respondents have been examined according to the following criteria: family status, level of education, place of resi-dence. A projective research method and tests-questionnaires in the work with ATO participants have been compared in order to distinguish a type that fits them more than others. It has been found that with an increase in the level of personal anxiety, there is an increase in the levels of situational anxiety and depression, while there is a decrease of the self-esteem level. Therefore, the psycho-correction work with ATO participants should be aimed at improving their self-esteem, which causes the normalization of levels of situational, personality anxiety and depression. A place of resi-dence, marital status, and education degree influence the studied indicators, in other words, the married participants have more adequate self-esteem, anxiety and depression levels as compared to the unmarried ones. It can be ex-plained by the fact that family members' psychological support acts as one of significant factors having an impact on the psychological states of ATO participants. When questioning ATO participants, it is appropriate to use projective techniques that do not involve direct unpleasant questions and do not make them uncomfortable and uncertain. And only in the case of detecting a certain violation in the process of the projective method interpretation, its quantitative analysis should be carried out using questionnaires. Further research is going to be aimed at finding the most optimal psychotherapeutic methods for correcting the negative psychological characteristics of ATO participants.