For war-affected Ukrainian youth, sleep is disrupted not only by environmental realities — air-raid sirens and the loss of predictable schedules — but also by psychological stressors like hypervigilance, rumination, and family displacement. While traditional mental health interventions are largely unavailable in these contexts, digital interventions offer scalable alternatives.
In partnership with leading researchers (see below), we developed and piloted Uplift, a brief digital intervention grounded in savoring — the intentional attention to and amplification of positive experiences. Savoring has evidence supporting its role in emotion regulation and sleep improvement. We hypothesized that a savoring-based intervention could improve sleep quality in conflict-affected adolescents. We conducted a pre-post pilot study with 78 adolescents, the majority of which reported improved sleep.
Traditional mental health interventions are difficult to scale and access in conflict zones.
Conflict-related stress severely impacts sleep quality for Ukrainian adolescents, which in turn undermines emotional health and resilience during this critical developmental period.
Savoring is the practice of consciously attending to and amplifying positive experiences. It enhances positive emotions that can serve to buffer effects of stress and build long-term resources. There is growing evidence that savoring at bedtime can improve sleep by displacing rumination/worry, reducing vigilance, and promoting feelings of safety to support sleep onset and quality.
We sought to develop a digital savoring intervention that was evidence-based, effective in improving sleep and well-being, culturally appropriate and engaging for Ukrainian youth, and brief enough to capture attention quickly.
"I am now going through a rather stressful moment in my life. My brother was mobilized. And, in fact, this project turned up very successfully, because my sleep deteriorated greatly. Therefore, this work has even been therapeutic and I could learn from my own experience how this chatbot helps people in stressful situations." - Youth co-design participant
We created a tool called Uplift that teaches adolescents via their messaging platform of choice (e.g., Telegram or WhatsApp) how to savor uplifting experiences at bedtime to displace rumination and improve sleep. The tool consists of a conversational interface with interactive exercises, entertaining memes, personalized check-ins, and peer support. Uplift engages users during the day to avoid the digital sleep intervention pitfall of encouraging device use at night.
Uplift can be delivered at a fraction of the cost of traditional mental health services, at an optimal time for maximum effect (bedtime), at an optimal age for altering mental health trajectories (adolescence), and in a format that is both engaging and accessible.
Research & Co-design
We conducted in-depth interviews with Ukrainian adolescents and assembled a Youth Digital Design Team to understand questions such as how war and displacement were affecting their sleep; when and why worry and rumination intensify; how youth were using their phones; what types of digital experiences felt trustworthy, relevant, and engaging. Our research revealed the the challenges Ukrainian youth currently face:
Normalized trauma: For many, the war had become a constant backdrop disrupting sleep and daily life
Interrupted sleep: Air raid sirens sound at all hours; youth described lying awake worrying about loved ones or unable to sleep after bombardments
Family displacement: Many had friends or family members who fled abroad, creating new social dynamics and feelings of isolation
Universal adolescent stress: In addition to living near active conflict zones, youth experienced stress about exams, their social lives, and the things adolescents everywhere often navigate.
Digital dependence: Frequent electricity and internet outages made reliable digital access critical but challenging. Phones were also a key way of staying connected with peers.
Ukrainian youth were eager for connection, stability, and purpose. They have a strong desire for peer relationships, connection, and wanting to contribute meaningfully and help others. Youth also connected with the concept of savoring. They experienced bedtime as a key moment for worry and rumination. Many were already using virtual tools to communicate and de-stress and expressed interest in trying new approaches. A brief, self-directed format aligned with their busy, unpredictable schedules. The focus on finding moments of uplift – rather than eliminating stress – felt realistic and empowering.
Rapid Prototyping & Co-Design
Working with the Youth Digital Design Team we assembled, we experimented with early concepts and prototypes such as: digital manuals, short-form video explanations, simple practice exercises, virtual spaces and games, and eventually a lightweight messaging-based solution.
Youth contributed with frank, specific feedback: what felt cringe, what felt motivating, what metaphors landed, and what felt supportive in wartime. They contributed language, humor, and ideas for the designs. This process led to a messaging-based chatbot that struck a balance between expert guidance, informal support, and engaging exercises and examples.
Development, Youth Workshops, & Iteration
We built a prototype on Telegram (the messaging platform of choice for Ukrainian youth) and undertook multiple rounds of testing. Completion was initially low, so we analyzed drop-off points, gathered qualitative feedback, and revised. We added more humor, memes, and personalization; made savoring instructions clearer and more actionable; strengthened early “hook” moments to sustain interest; and improved the flow and activities. Subsequent rounds showed far stronger engagement and uptake of savoring.
We partnered with AUFCR to run structured co-design workshops, during which youth leaders tested the module; identified confusing moments and emotional barriers; suggested content, metaphors, memes, and improvements; shared candid reflections on using savoring under war conditions.
Among other key improvements, our youth partners found ways to help youth feel less guilty about experiencing and savoring uplifting emotions during wartime. For example, they recorded brief audio messages that we included to address this barrier directly, an important reframing that strengthened emotional resonance. Key insights from this formative work include the importance of:
Creating opportunities for youth to support each other and contribute to Uplift (e.g., with user-generated content and savoring prompts), which proved a remarkably powerful motivator to participants.
Creating an adaptive content schedule and reminder framework to respond to varied usage patterns (e.g., power vs. intermittent users) and account for distinct user preferences.
Using humor, empathy, and discovery to drive engagement and savoring practice.
Near-peer relationships drive engagement. The peer distribution model was powerful—youth leaders reported feeling motivated to help others, and participants trusted recommendations from peers.
"These workshops helped me get out of such a mental case a little. I had big problems with work throughout July. I was standing idle and somehow I didn't feel very good because I didn't do anything, I didn't feel useful in this world. And while working on this project, that feeling returned. And I felt better because of the thought that I was doing something useful now, it would help someone." - Youth co-design participant
We piloted the refined module with 78 youth from AUFCR’s Child Friendly Spaces.
We developed a chatbot-based intervention delivered via Telegram that teaches four interconnected savoring skills over four days (~5 minutes per day) and prompts device-free exercises during the day and at bedtime.
63% of participants completed the 4-day intervention.
50% continued to use the optional reminders and sleep logging features beyond the core module of four days, many for over thirty days.
Participants were very positive about savoring and the practical techniques for managing bedtime thoughts, with a Net Promoter Score of 60 for whether they would recommend savoring to a friend (Creators of NPS, Bain & Company, suggest a score: Above 0 is good; Above 20 is favorable; Above 50 is excellent)
The majority of users who completed the module reported improved sleep from baseline:
Sleep Ease: 76%
Sleep Quality: 68%
Ease Waking Up: 79%
Users who continued using the application for longer periods reported more substantial and consistent improvements across all metrics.
"For me, it was most useful in the sense that even when the day was the most unsuccessful, or, perhaps, filled with such negative emotions, you still sit and try to make a pleasant memory of what it was after all. And in this way, we begin to appreciate such things. The smallest pleasures: that today I ate such a delicious dish, or today I met a person whom I have not seen for a very long time, today I heard such useful information. And so you think about it before going to bed, and you get inspired, and you know how this motivation is on you at night."
Uplift is cost-effective, requires minimal infrastructure, targets a developmentally sensitive period, and accommodates the unpredictable circumstances of conflict. It can reach thousands of adolescents at negligible marginal cost once developed.
In addition to improving the module, the team is pursuing opportunities to adapt Uplift for other conflict-affected and high-stress populations, conduct a feasibility and preliminary outcomes trial, and scale access to Uplift through partnerships and commercialization. We are eager to scale Uplift to youth across Ukraine.
This work provides preliminary evidence that scalable digital interventions grounded in positive emotion regulation can improve sleep in conflict-affected adolescents. By centering adolescent voices in design, we created an intervention addressing both clinical need (sleep improvement) and humanistic need (peer connection and normalization of experience).
Research: Ronald Dahl (UC Berkeley), Dana McMakin (FIU), Megan Cherewick (CU), Monika Lind (UC Irvine),
Co-design and partnership: War Child, All Ukrainian Foundation for Children’s Rights, Youth Digital Design Team, Ukrainian researchers Karina Mokhammed and Lilia Martinkovska
Funding: CERES, Templeton World Charity Foundation