biological basis of intergenerational trauma

Parental PTSD is characterized by physiological and emotional dysregulation, trauma related beliefs, and avoidance/withdrawal. Another set of studies concerns how the infants' sociocultural and family environment, the parents' representations, behavior and patterns of communication with their infant, can be considered as important factors involved in the process of ITT, a mechanism that appears to be a complex interaction between several co-processes. Biological models have tried to understand the intergenerational transmission of stress ( 15) and the epigenetic mechanisms of stress and trauma transmission ( 16). Since this paper, two directions have been especially explored. He described four models: psychodynamic, sociocultural, family system, and biological. Kellermann ( 14) proposed to distinguish the process of transmission, and what is transmitted. Research has highlighted several possible models that may help explain the pathways of intergenerational trauma transmission.

Various other backgrounds have been explored in the process of ITT across generations, in different contexts of populations at risk for PTSD: low-income ( 11), abused mothers ( 12), adverse Childhood experiences ( 13) etc. Many of these studies referred to collective historical trauma: the Holocaust, September 9/11, Vietnam Veterans, the Armenian genocide, etc., in which the impact of parents' post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was measured in older children or in the second generation ( 6– 10). Several studies in recent decades have tried to explain the transmission of parental trauma to the child. In recent years, several studies have pointed to intergenerational trauma transmission (ITT) in countries affected by massive traumatic events (i.e., Burundi, Rwanda, Cambodia, Sierra Leone) and underlined the need to understand the mechanisms of transmission, in order to limit the potential negative impact on an entire community or even region, through generations ( 2– 5). Trauma exposure is extremely common in countries affected by conflicts or natural disasters. The results of the microanalysis of interaction can shed light on the fundamental role of intermodal exchanges between mother and infant in trauma transmission during mothers' trauma reactivation. We found no significant associations between interaction and infant gender and age, the severity of traumatic experience, mothers' depression and anxiety symptoms, and the country of residence. The “absence” of the mother during trauma recall seems to have repercussions on infants' behavior and interaction infants show coping strategies that are discussed. The mother-child interaction “infant self-stimulation-mother looks absent” and “Infant sucks the breast-mother looks absent” occurred more often during the mothers' traumatic narrations.

The data analysis highlighted significant differences in mothers, children and their interaction during the “traumatic narration”: mothers touched and looked at the infant less, looked more absent and smiled less, and looked less at the interviewer infants looked less at the interviewer, and sucked the breast more. Impact of traumatic event (IES-R), the level of depression and anxiety (HAD) were investigated in order to have a holistic understanding of the trauma transmission mechanism. Three minutes of each sequence were coded through a specific grid for microanalysis, according to different communication modalities (touch, visual, and vocal), for both the mother and the child. Twenty-four mother-infant dyadic interactions of traumatized mothers and children aged from 1.5 to 30 months Central Africa, Chad, and Cameroon were videotaped during three sequences: a neutral initial session (baseline) exploring mothers' representations of the infant and of their bonding a second sequence, “the traumatic narration,” in which mothers were asked to talk about the difficult events they had experienced and a third sequence focusing on a neutral subject. We investigated the impact of mothers' post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms on the quality of the dyadic interaction by conducting a microanalysis of mother-infant interactions at specific moments when trauma was recalled, compared to more neutral moments. The objective of the study was to examine the process of mother to infant trauma transmission among traumatized mothers in humanitarian contexts. 6Hôpital Necker-Enfants Malades, Assistance Publique Hopitaux De Paris, Paris, France.

4Université Paris Descartes, Paris, France.2Université Paris Nanterre, Nanterre, France.Elisabetta Dozio 1 * Marion Feldman 2 Cécile Bizouerne 1 Elise Drain 3 Mathilde Laroche Joubert 2 Malika Mansouri 4 Marie Rose Moro 5 Lisa Ouss 6

Biological basis of intergenerational trauma