title: Mental Health in Offspring of Traumatized Refugees with and without Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.
abstract: Intergenerational transmission of psychological trauma and the impact of parental post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on offspring are controversially discussed. We studied 50 offspring (36 women and 14 men, mean age 42.1 years) of refugees who were severely traumatized as children at the end of World War II. From these, 25 of the refugees currently suffered from chronic PTSD, and 25 had no PTSD. Parental PTSD status did not significantly influence mental health [as per the Symptom Checklist (SCL)-90-R] or quality of life (assessed by the 36-item Short-form Health Survey) in their children. In the entire sample, frequency of talking with the mother about the flight correlated with phobic anxiety (r = 0.67, p = 0.03). Interestingly, the stated burden of having a parent with a history of flight significantly (p < 0.05) correlated with almost all subscales of the SCL-90-R. These results in a non-clinical sample do not support a specific role of parental PTSD in intergenerational trauma transmission. Our other remarkable, but preliminary, results need to be studied in larger samples using more subtle interaction or schema analyses. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf and Schön Klinik Hamburg-Eilbek, Hamburg, Germany. cmuhtz@uke.de.|Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany. cmuhtz@uke.de.
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Muhtz
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Charlotte
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wittekind
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Kathrin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Godemann
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Von Alm
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Lena
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jelinek
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany.
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Yassouridis
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kellner
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D032721:Adult Children / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000209:etiology / Q000523:psychology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D012036:Refugees / Q000523:psychology*; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000523:psychology*; D047789:World War II
keywords: World War II; intergenerational; post-traumatic stress disorder; refugees; trauma