The intergenerational impact of trauma: individual, family and community implications

The intergenerational transmission (IT) of trauma can be defined as the influence of a disruptive experience perpetuated from a generation to another. Disruptive experiences can promote the onset psychopathological symptoms, compromising both the individual and the interpersonal functioning. Thus, literature (Kaitz et al., 2009; Pat-Horenczyk et al., 2014) has highlighted that the presence of this psychopathological pattern affect the way the parent respond to the emotional and physical needs of the child, which in turn may lead toward emerging difficulties of the child itself. Despite these evidences, only a few studies (Schwerdtfeger et al., 2013; Starr et al., 2014) have investigated the presence of different trajectories for the transmission of traumatic symptoms suggesting that the intergenerational transmission of traumatic symptoms can follow two different routes: direct and indirect transmission. Direct transmission is represented by specific effects of the parents’ symptomatic behaviors, while the indirect transmission is described as the overall parental difficulty shown because of his/her own traumatic history. Aim of the current review is to report those studies where the intergenerational transmission (IT) of the trauma has been taken into account according to three main perspectives: 1) the IT impact on the individual functioning; 2) the family dynamics involved in the IT of trauma; and 3) the community/social implications related to the IT.