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Intergenerational transmission of war-related trauma assessed 40 years after exposure
BACKGROUND: The intergenerational transmission of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from parent to offspring has been suggested in the literature, but this is highly controversial. We aimed to study the association between veterans’ war exposure and lifetime PTSD and the psychological characteris...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6688296/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31413722 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12991-019-0238-2 |
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author | Castro-Vale, Ivone Severo, Milton Carvalho, Davide Mota-Cardoso, Rui |
author_facet | Castro-Vale, Ivone Severo, Milton Carvalho, Davide Mota-Cardoso, Rui |
author_sort | Castro-Vale, Ivone |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: The intergenerational transmission of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from parent to offspring has been suggested in the literature, but this is highly controversial. We aimed to study the association between veterans’ war exposure and lifetime PTSD and the psychological characteristics of their respective offspring, 40 years after war-related trauma. METHODS: Forty-four adult offspring of veterans with PTSD and 29 offspring of veterans without PTSD were included in the study, from a total of 46 veterans. War exposure intensity, lifetime PTSD, and the general psychopathology (with Brief Symptom Inventory—BSI) of the veterans were studied, as were childhood trauma, attachment, and the general psychopathology (with BSI) of their offspring. RESULTS: Veterans’ war exposure was associated with BSI in the offspring with regard to somatisation (β = 0.025; CI 0.001, 0.050), phobic anxiety (β = 0.014; CI: 0.000, 0.027), Global Severity Index (GSI) (β = 0.022; CI 0.005, 0.038), and Positive Symptom Distress Index (β = 0.020; CI 0.006, 0.033). The fathers’ GSI mediated only 18% of the effect of the veterans’ total war exposure on offspring’s GSI. Fathers’ war exposure was associated with offspring’s physical neglect as a childhood adversity, although non-significantly (p = 0.063). None of the other variables was associated with veterans’ war exposure, and veterans’ lifetime PTSD was not associated with any of the variables studied. CONCLUSIONS: The offspring of war veterans showed increased psychological suffering as a function of their fathers’ war exposure intensity, but not of their fathers’ lifetime PTSD. These results could be used to suggest that mental health support for veterans’ offspring should consider the war exposure intensity of their fathers, and not just psychopathology. This could spare offspring’s suffering if this mental health support could be delivered early on, after veterans return from war. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6688296 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-66882962019-08-14 Intergenerational transmission of war-related trauma assessed 40 years after exposure Castro-Vale, Ivone Severo, Milton Carvalho, Davide Mota-Cardoso, Rui Ann Gen Psychiatry Primary Research BACKGROUND: The intergenerational transmission of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from parent to offspring has been suggested in the literature, but this is highly controversial. We aimed to study the association between veterans’ war exposure and lifetime PTSD and the psychological characteristics of their respective offspring, 40 years after war-related trauma. METHODS: Forty-four adult offspring of veterans with PTSD and 29 offspring of veterans without PTSD were included in the study, from a total of 46 veterans. War exposure intensity, lifetime PTSD, and the general psychopathology (with Brief Symptom Inventory—BSI) of the veterans were studied, as were childhood trauma, attachment, and the general psychopathology (with BSI) of their offspring. RESULTS: Veterans’ war exposure was associated with BSI in the offspring with regard to somatisation (β = 0.025; CI 0.001, 0.050), phobic anxiety (β = 0.014; CI: 0.000, 0.027), Global Severity Index (GSI) (β = 0.022; CI 0.005, 0.038), and Positive Symptom Distress Index (β = 0.020; CI 0.006, 0.033). The fathers’ GSI mediated only 18% of the effect of the veterans’ total war exposure on offspring’s GSI. Fathers’ war exposure was associated with offspring’s physical neglect as a childhood adversity, although non-significantly (p = 0.063). None of the other variables was associated with veterans’ war exposure, and veterans’ lifetime PTSD was not associated with any of the variables studied. CONCLUSIONS: The offspring of war veterans showed increased psychological suffering as a function of their fathers’ war exposure intensity, but not of their fathers’ lifetime PTSD. These results could be used to suggest that mental health support for veterans’ offspring should consider the war exposure intensity of their fathers, and not just psychopathology. This could spare offspring’s suffering if this mental health support could be delivered early on, after veterans return from war. BioMed Central 2019-08-09 /pmc/articles/PMC6688296/ /pubmed/31413722 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12991-019-0238-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Primary Research Castro-Vale, Ivone Severo, Milton Carvalho, Davide Mota-Cardoso, Rui Intergenerational transmission of war-related trauma assessed 40 years after exposure |
title | Intergenerational transmission of war-related trauma assessed 40 years after exposure |
title_full | Intergenerational transmission of war-related trauma assessed 40 years after exposure |
title_fullStr | Intergenerational transmission of war-related trauma assessed 40 years after exposure |
title_full_unstemmed | Intergenerational transmission of war-related trauma assessed 40 years after exposure |
title_short | Intergenerational transmission of war-related trauma assessed 40 years after exposure |
title_sort | intergenerational transmission of war-related trauma assessed 40 years after exposure |
topic | Primary Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6688296/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31413722 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12991-019-0238-2 |
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