The Tuskegee experiments are a dark mark on American history and just one example of white healthcare providers experimenting on Black patients. None of the men ever received treatment for syphilis. Hundreds of unknowing participants went on to infect their wives, some of whom gave birth to children affected by the disease. The researchers were deceitful and told these men that they were receiving treatment for a vague and made-up illness they called “bad blood.” What they were actually doing was infecting them with syphilis.

Public Health Service began a racist, abusive, and exploitative experiment: its goal was to investigate the effects of untreated syphilis, but since nobody would volunteer to be infected with a deadly disease, those involved in carrying out the experiment chose to infect 600 Black men in Alabama without their consent. One troubling example of how traumatic events can change behaviors that pass through generations is the Tuskegee Experiment. It can cause parents to lose trust in other people (or systems), get stuck in survival mode, and shape their beliefs according to their experiences. Traumatic events can change the way people view the world around them. Below, we’ve listed some of the main ways generational trauma can affect families. Parents experience trauma firsthand, and the impact carries over to subsequent generations in various ways. Generational trauma, at its core, is a phenomenon that affects family units. Their children, in turn, learn these behaviors and patterns from their parents.īut generational trauma extends far beyond learned behaviors it is a social, cultural, and possibly even genetic experience that can cause untold hurt in families living in a trauma cycle. These situations can cause people to change the way they view the world.

The enslavement and mass incarceration of Black AmericansĮssentially, any stressful or anxiety-provoking situation can cause lasting changes to behaviors, beliefs, and patterns.

The genocide of Indigenous peoples in the Americas, as well as the lingering impact of residential schools.

The Armenian Genocide and the Rwandan Genocide.

While the research on Holocaust survivors is the most robust, researchers have explored several other sources of generational trauma, including: Generational trauma can begin after any traumatic experience. These adult children, in turn, can pass the trauma to their own children, resulting in a devastating cycle of poor mental health outcomes for entire families, communities, and cultures. Early research into generational trauma looked at the children of Holocaust survivors and found startling health effects, even though the children had never endured the horrific trauma firsthand.

Generational trauma refers to traumatic events that have a ripple effect across generations. The good news is that healing from generational trauma is possible, and several therapeutic techniques can help you to break the cycle once and for all. While we’re still learning more about the role of generational trauma, initial research has shown profound negative effects on the children of trauma survivors, even if they’ve never experienced trauma themselves. Generational trauma, also called intergenerational trauma, can persist in families for decades, passing from parent to child and even grandparent to grandchildren and their children.

Intergenerational trauma social work