Transgenerational trauma
Transgenerational trauma, or intergenerational trauma, is the psychological and physiological effects that the trauma experienced by people has on subsequent generations in that group. The primary mode of transmission is the shared family environment of the infant causing psychological, behavioral and social changes in the individual.
Collective trauma is when psychological trauma experienced by communities and identity groups is carried on as part of the group's collective memory and shared sense of identity. For example, collective trauma was experienced by Jewish Holocaust survivors and other members of the Jewish community at the time, by the Indigenous Peoples of Canada during the Canadian Indian residential school system and by African Americans who were enslaved. When this collective trauma affects subsequent generations, it is called transgenerational trauma. For example, if Jewish people experience extreme stress or practice survivalism out of fear of another Holocaust, despite being born after the Holocaust, then they are experiencing transgenerational trauma.
Transgenerational trauma can be a collective experience that affects groups of people who share a cultural identity. It can also be applied to single families or individual parent–child dyads. For example, survivors of individual child abuse and both direct survivors of the collective trauma and members of subsequent generations individually may develop complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
Examples of this include collective trauma experienced by descendants of the Atlantic slave trade; segregation and Jim Crow laws in the United States; apartheid in South Africa; the Scramble for Africa, Armenian genocide survivors, Jewish Holocaust survivors and other members of the Jewish community at the time; Bosnian war survivors; by the First Peoples of Canada during the Canadian Indian residential school system; by Native Americans when they were forcibly displaced and removed from their land; and, in Australia, the Stolen Generations and other hardships inflicted on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Descendants of survivors may experience extreme stress, leading to a variety of other consequences.
While transgenerational trauma gained attention in recent decades, the hypothesis of an epigenetic mechanism remains controversial due to a lack of rigorous experimental results on humans.
History
This field of research is relatively young, but has been expanded since the mid-2000s.Intergenerational trauma was first recognized in the children of Holocaust survivors. In 1966, psychologists began to observe large numbers of children of Holocaust survivors seeking mental help in clinics in Canada. The grandchildren of Holocaust survivors were overrepresented by 300% among the referrals to a psychiatry clinic in comparison with their representation in the general population.
Since then, transgenerational trauma has been noted amongst descendants of African-Americans forced into slavery, Native American genocide survivors, war survivors, refugees, survivors of domestic violence, and many other groups that have experienced collective distress.
Research on possible biological mechanisms for inheritance of trauma began in the late 1990s. It has been suggested that traumatic stress can be passed down to future generations via epigenetics. However, the effect is difficult to separate from environmental and cultural transmission and conclusive evidence that it occurs in humans has yet to be found.
Although methylation of stress-related genes in humans may affect development, there is no evidence that these changes in humans are passed on to subsequent generations. Methylation is normally erased when an egg cell is fertilized.
Definitions and description
Transgenerational trauma is a collective experience that affects groups of people because of their cultural identity. Because of its collective nature, the term is not usually applied to single families or individual parent–child dyads. However, like survivors of individual child abuse, individually, both direct survivors of the collective trauma and members of subsequent generations may develop complex post-traumatic stress disorder.Trauma may be transmitted socially or through the effects of stress on development before birth.
Historical trauma
, a sub-type of transgenerational trauma, is the collective devastation of the past that continues to affect populations in the present through inter-generational transmission. Historical trauma results in vulnerability to mental and physical health problems due to ancestral suffering which has been collected throughout generations into "legacies of disability for contemporary descendants". Although the actual traumatic event and affect group are heterogeneous, all historical traumas consist of three elements: a traumatic event, a resulting collective suffering, and a multigenerational impact of that trauma. Over time the trauma and relationship to the victims typically evolve in a similar but more complicated way to genetic anticipation, resulting in a greater loss of identity of the victims and further integration into society.For individual victims, historical trauma often manifests in four ways: depression, hyper-vigilance, traumatic bond formation, and reenactment of the trauma. Building upon the clinical observations by Selma Fraiberg, child trauma researchers such as Byron Egeland, Inge Bretherton, and Daniel Schechter have empirically identified psychological mechanisms that favor intergenerational transmission, including dissociation in the context of attachment, and "communication" of prior traumatic experience as an effect of parental efforts to maintain self-regulation in the context of post-traumatic stress disorder and related alterations in social cognitive processes.
Symptoms
Symptoms of intergenerational trauma always begins with the survivor of a trauma, which tend to manifest as symptoms of PTSD. Oftentimes trauma in the second generation is deemed as a traumatic response to parental trauma. Transmission between the parent and child can be broken down into five measures: communication, conflict, family cohesion, parental warmth, and parental involvement. High levels of maternal stress were directly correlated with weak family functioning and indirectly correlated with deviant behavior among children. Common symptoms in children consisted of depression, antisocial behavior, delinquency, and disruptive behavior in school. Some children experienced direct transmission in which their trauma stemmed from the interactions and relationships with their parents, while others experienced indirect transmission in which their trauma was mainly rooted in guilt. Those who were affected through direct transmission were more likely to lash out through their actions, while those who were affected through indirect transmission were more likely to develop depression, anxiety, and guilt.Symptoms also differed based on ethnicity and type of original trauma. Enslavement, genocide, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and extreme poverty are all common sources of trauma that lead to intergenerational trauma. A lack of therapy also worsens symptoms and can lead to transmission. For instance, survivors of child sexual abuse may negatively influence future generations due to their past unresolved trauma. This can lead to increased feelings of mistrust, isolation, and loneliness. Descendants of enslaved persons when faced with racism-motivated violence, microaggressions, or outward racism, react as if they were faced with the original trauma that was generationally transmitted to them. There are a variety of stressors in one's life that led to this PTSD-like reaction such as varying racist experiences, daily stressors, major race-related life events, or collective racism or traumas. This also presents itself in parenting styles. Goodman and West-Olatunji proposed potential transgenerational trauma in the aftermath of natural disasters. In a post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, residents have seen a dramatic increase in interpersonal violence with higher mortality rates. This phenomenon has been also been reported in the descendants of Indigenous students at residential schools, who were removed from their parents and extended family and lacked models for parenting as a result. Being punished for speaking their native language and forbidden from practicing traditional rituals had a traumatic effect on many students, and child abuse was rampant in the schools as well.
Symptoms of transgenerational trauma have in recent years been identified among black Americans, in relation to the effects of slavery and racial discrimination. This passing of trauma can be rooted from the family unit itself, or found in society via current discrimination and oppression. The traumatic event does not need to be individually experienced by all members of a family; the lasting effects can still remain and impact descendants from external factors. For example, black children's internalization of others' reactions to their skin color manifests as a form of lasting trauma originally experienced by their ancestors. This reaction to black skin stems from similar attitudes that led to the traumatizing conditions and enslavement of slaves. Black children and youth are more susceptible to racial trauma because they have not yet acquired the knowledge to have a full understanding of racism and its effects. However, these traumatizing behaviors experienced at such a young age are a reflection of a child's parenting. A White child may learn racist behaviors from their environment, but by the same token a black child can learn to assert their blackness and how to respond to racist remarks and actions from their parents. Traces of trauma have an impact on black and other minority children's success in an educational context. Transgenerational trauma has also been heavily recorded in refugees and their children, which can last through several generations. Such traumas can stem from violence, political persecution, familial instability, as well as the hardships of migration.