As a result of the Russo-Ukrainian war, several million Ukrainians fled, more than one million to Germany. Until now, most studies on mental health of Ukrainian refugees are cross-sectional and there is a clear need to observe their well-being. We employed five waves of the IAB-BiB/FReDA-BAMF-SOEP (later BiB/FReDA) survey on Ukrainian refugees in Germany analyzing affective balance, starting shortly after flight in summer 2022. By observing the time span between the summer of 2022 and the fall of 2024, we could emphasize potential risk and protective factors for Ukrainian refugees’ affective balance, a scale that indicates affective well-being by measuring angry, worried, happy, and sad emotions. We found that the respondents’ affective well-being increased over time, mostly due to decreasing frequencies of negative affects. Moreover, our results suggest that while the effects of worries on affective balance did not diminish upon controlling for potential protective factors, contact to Germans, German language proficiency, and pursuing a part-time job still improved affective balance.
We thus conclude that over time, Ukrainian refugees’ situation in Germany improves, as well. Nevertheless, their worries about their economic, health-related, or family-related situation should not be discounted.
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