Ukrainian Refugees Trauma and Allostatic Load MRI Study
Anonymized Dataset on Trauma, Coping, Psychopathology, Allostatic Load, and MRI-Derived Measures in Ukrainian Refugees and Healthy Controls
Structural brain MRI, questionnaires and stress biomarkers from a cross-sectional Wroclaw study of 60 Ukrainian refugees and 50 matched controls. Participant-level tables with MRI-derived measures are open under CC BY 4.0; the scans are available from the authors on request.
Overview
This entry covers a cross-sectional study run by the Department of Psychiatry at Wroclaw Medical University in Poland. It compared adults who fled Ukraine after the Russian invasion of February 2022 with healthy controls of similar age and sex, looking at trauma exposure, coping, psychiatric symptoms, the physiological wear of chronic stress (allostatic load) and brain structure. The university's research data repository holds an anonymized participant-level table under CC BY 4.0, which includes selected processed structural MRI variables. The scans themselves are not deposited; the study papers say the raw data will be made available by the authors.
Composition
The deposit describes 60 refugees and 50 controls. Refugees were 49 women and 11 men with a mean age of 27.8 years; controls were 36 women and 14 men with a mean age of 26.1 years. In the cortical thickness analysis, 34 refugees had PTSD symptoms and 22 did not, which sums to 56 rather than 60 without explanation in that paper. Participants were recruited through social media and institutional websites.
Acquisition
Brain MRI was acquired on a 3 T Philips Ingenia with a high-resolution sagittal T1-weighted sequence. Scan parameters are not reported. Cortical thickness for 68 Desikan-Killiany regions was computed with CAT12 in SPM12. Interviews took place on the day of scanning or shortly before. The tables also hold questionnaires on PTSD, anxiety, depression, insomnia, affect, coping, resilience and lifetime trauma, plus blood pressure, heart rate, lipids, glucose markers, cortisol, DHEAS and inflammatory markers.
Annotations
There are no image labels. The tables give questionnaire scores, the allostatic load index, a coping flexibility index and group status.
Known limitations
- Only derived tables are public; the MRI scans must be requested from the authors and no terms are published.
- The papers report MRI results only for the refugees, so how many controls were scanned is not stated.
- Sex counts in the cortical thickness paper are inconsistent between its sections.
- Small single-site sample from one city.
Cohort
Aggregate numbers from the sources below. Bars are relative to the 110 subjects.
Sex
- Female 85 77%
- Male 25 23%
Section 2.1, Table 1 in Maciaszek et al. 2026, Frontiers in Psychiatry 17, Belief inflexibility reduces the impact of allostatic overload on psychotic-like experiences among Ukrainian refugees
Condition
Groups can overlap
- Healthy control 50 45%Age mean 26.1 ± 3.4
- Post-traumatic stress disorder 34 31%
Section 2.1, Table 1 in Maciaszek et al. 2026, Frontiers in Psychiatry 17, Belief inflexibility reduces the impact of allostatic overload on psychotic-like experiences among Ukrainian refugees; Table 1 in Maciaszek et al. 2026, Frontiers in Psychiatry 17, Lower right insular thickness is associated with more severe post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms among Ukrainian refugees
Contrast / sequence
Groups can overlap
- T1-weighted 60 55%
License and access
Our reading of the license, not legal advice. Before you use the data, read the original license and confirm that your use is allowed. We take no responsibility for how you use a dataset. Full disclaimer
Ask the authors or the data holder. No published process or terms, and access is at their discretion
The Wroclaw Medical University repository deposit (CC BY 4.0) holds anonymized participant-level tables: demographics, questionnaires, biochemical markers, the allostatic load and coping flexibility indices and selected processed structural MRI variables. The MRI scans are not in the deposit. The study papers state that the raw data will be made available by the authors; no procedure or terms are published.
Different parts of the data carry different licenses. The summary on the right shows the most restrictive answer per rule.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Use, share and adapt the data for any purpose, including commercial use, as long as you credit the creators.
What you can do
- Yes
- Yes
- Yes
- Yes
- Yes
What you can share
- Yes
- Yes
- Yes
What you must do
- Yes
- Share alike No
- No
- No
- Manuscript review No
- Release code No
- Return results No
- Delete after use No
Limits
- No
- Location limits No
No published license or data use terms
The data holder has published no license and no data use terms. Any use, sharing or commercial right has to be agreed with the data holder, and nothing can be assumed to be allowed. Default copyright and data protection law still apply.
The papers' data availability statements give no terms for the raw data.
What you can do
- Commercial use Not stated
- Not stated
- Train ML models Not stated
- Create derived data Not stated
- Publish results Not stated
What you can share
- Share the data Not stated
- Share derived data Not stated
- Share trained models Not stated
What you must do
- Cite or credit Not stated
- Share alike Not stated
- Sign an agreement Not stated
- Ethics approval Not stated
- Manuscript review Not stated
- Release code Not stated
- Return results Not stated
- Delete after use Not stated
Limits
- No re-identification Not stated
- Location limits Not stated
Citation
Maciaszek JP. Anonymized Dataset on Trauma, Coping, Psychopathology, Allostatic Load, and MRI-Derived Measures in Ukrainian Refugees and Healthy Controls. Version 1.0. Wroclaw Medical University (2026). doi:10.60956/a79t-qm52
Sources
Every number on this page comes from one of these documents. Each chart names the table or page it is taken from. The raw numbers are in stats.csv.
- DataCite record of doi:10.60956/a79t-qm52, version 1.0 (description, rights, dates) website
- Maciaszek et al. 2026, Frontiers in Psychiatry 17, Lower right insular thickness is associated with more severe post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms among Ukrainian refugees paper
- Maciaszek et al. 2026, Frontiers in Psychiatry 17, Belief inflexibility reduces the impact of allostatic overload on psychotic-like experiences among Ukrainian refugees paper