Diagnosis of Interagency Coordination in Preventing Suicidal Behaviour among War Veterans: from a Pilot Experiment to a National System in Ukraine

Abstract

The article substantiates the application of the network governance approach as a tool for diagnosing interagency coordination in the field of suicide prevention among war veterans in Ukraine. The empirical basis of the study is the draft Concept of establishing and developing a multilevel interagency system of crisis response and prevention of suicidal behaviour among war veterans for the period until 2032 (as of June 2026 – a current draft not yet adopted as a separate dedicated act), in which the Ministry of Veterans Affairs is designated as coordinator and the Ministries of Health, Social Policy, Defence, Education and Science, and Internal Affairs as co-executors. It is shown that at present the relevant measures are integrated into large-scale sectoral strategies rather than concentrated in a single dedicated document, and that the draft Concept represents an attempt to transition to a distinct interagency system. Veteran suicide is qualified as a wicked cross-sectoral problem whose resolution, by its very nature, does not fall within the competence of any single agency. It is demonstrated that the three-variant logic of the draft Concept (fragmented initiatives – consolidation within a single ministry – a multilevel interagency system) reproduces the dialectic of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, yet the chosen synthesis contains an internal contradiction: the coordination function is assigned to the structurally weakest of the participating agencies, which lacks hierarchical leverage over the others. On this basis, the key thesis is formulated regarding the non-identity of coordination as a formal mandate and coordination as institutional capacity. Within the lead-organization model, the coordinator design is assessed against the contingency factors of public-network effectiveness. An original diagnostic instrument is constructed – a map of the “seams” (no-man’s zones) along the veteran’s crisis pathway and a typology of interagency coordination (nominal, procedural, substantive) – the application of which demonstrates that the highest risk is concentrated precisely at the points of interagency handover of responsibility that institutionally remain unowned, which, according to the evidence base, are the very transitions at which a person is most easily lost. The Ministry of Defence pilot experiment and the projected national system are substantiated as two levels of a single emerging architecture, in which the micro-level deficits of the pilot are predictably reproduced at the macro level.