Intergenerational trauma and posttraumatic growth among Syrian families

Abstract

Introduction: there is preponderant evidence that trauma can be transmitted across generations, but comparatively less is known about the mechanisms and protective factors involved. Particularly, the protective role of posttraumatic growth (PTG) in war contexts within and across generations is less understood. Therefore, this study examined the presence of intergenerational trauma in Syrian families and hypothesized that it is mediated by parental psychopathology and harsh parenting. Also, PTG was hypothesized to protect parents and children from effects of trauma.

Methods: sixty-seven Syrian parents reported cross-sectional data on themselves and their children. Non- and parametric tests, in addition to mediation and moderation analyses, were used to examine direct and indirect associations between parental war trauma, child war trauma, parental psychopathology, child psychosocial difficulties, aggressive discipline, and PTG.
Results: Moderate PTG levels were reported and found to moderate the effect of parental war trauma on depression, but not on child psychosocial difficulties. Parental war trauma was found to indirectly affect child psychosocial difficulties via parental psychopathology, but not via harsh parenting. Still, harsh parenting positively correlated with child psychosocial difficulties, parental anxiety levels, and posttraumatic stress disorder. Retrospective power analyses indicated insufficient statistical power for both null findings.

Discussion: findings suggest that trauma exposure is associated with parental psychopathology, which increases the frequency of harsh parenting, leading to psychosocial difficulties among children. Interventions should focus on addressing parental mental health and parenting behaviours, and fostering PTG among war-exposed parents to improve outcomes for the entire family system. Future studies should aim to replicate our findings using larger sample sizes, given the limited statistical power in some of our analyses.

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ORCID for Dennis Golm: orcid.org/0000-0002-2950-7935

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