Top

Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology

Published in:

01-06-2020 | Original Paper

The role of parental negative world assumptions in the intergenerational transmission of war trauma

Authors: Rahel Bachem, Johanna Scherf, Yafit Levin, Michela Schröder-Abé, Zahava Solomon

Published in: Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology | Issue 6/2020

Abstract

Purpose

Among the most prevalent and adverse sequalae of traumatic experiences are negative world assumptions (WAs), which describe trauma-related negative cognitions regarding the self, the world, and others. Even though a wealth of studies has shown intrapersonal associations between negative WAs and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), there has been little research on how WAs may affect family systems. This study examined the intergenerational associations between parental WAs, paternal PTSS, and maternal secondary traumatic stress (STS) on adult–children’s STS in veterans’ families. It was hypothesized that negative paternal WAs would mediate the association between parental PTSS/STS and adult–children’s STS.

Methods

Three domains of WAs (benevolence of the world, meaningfulness of the world, and self-worth) and PTSS were prospectively assessed in 123 father–mother–offspring triads of former Israeli veterans of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, their wives and adult offspring. Data were collected in 2003, 2008, and 2014, and analyzed using triadic path modeling.

Results

Mothers’ STS was associated with children’s STS via negative maternal WAs on world benevolence. Fathers’ PTSS was related to children’s STS via fathers’ WAs on world benevolence and self-worth. Moreover, fathers’ WAs on world benevolence and self-worth mediated the intergenerational transmission of STS from mothers to offspring. No effects were found for meaningfulness WAs.

Conclusion

Findings suggest that parental WAs related to world benevolence and paternal self-worth contribute to intergenerational trauma transmission. Clinical implications favor cognitive and systemic approaches to therapy that address negative benevolence and self-worth assumptions and involve the entire family system.

Celinski MJ, Gow KM (2005) Trauma clients: How understanding disintegration can help to restore resourcefulness of the self. Aust J Clin Exp Hypn 33:195–217

Ehlers A, Clark DM (2000) A cognitive model of posttraumatic stress disorder. Behav Res Ther 38:319–345. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0005-7967(99)00123-0 CrossRefPubMed

Janoff-Bulman R (1989) Assumptive worlds and the stress of traumatic events: applications of the schema construct. Soc Cogn 7:113–136. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.1989.7.2.113 CrossRef

Janoff-Bulman R (1992) Shattered assumptions: towards a new psychology of trauma. Free Press, New York

Dekel R, Solomon Z, Elklit A, Ginzburg K (2004) World assumptions and combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder. J Soc Psychol 144:407–420. https://doi.org/10.3200/SOCP.144.4.407-420 CrossRefPubMed

Dekel S, Peleg T, Solomon Z (2013) The relationship of PTSD to negative cognitions: a 17-year longitudinal study. Psychiatry Interpers Biol Process 76:241–255. https://doi.org/10.1521/psyc.2013.76.3.241 CrossRef

Bryant RA, Guthrie RM (2007) Maladaptive self-appraisals before trauma exposure predict posttraumatic stress disorder. J Consult Clin Psychol 75:812–815. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.75.5.812 CrossRefPubMed

Figley CR (1995) Compassion fatigue: coping with secondary traumatic stress disorder in those who treat the traumatized. Brunner/Mazel, New York

Ludick M, Figley CR (2017) Toward a mechanism for secondary trauma induction and reduction: reimagining a theory of secondary traumatic stress. Traumatology (Tallahass Fla) 23:112–123. https://doi.org/10.1037/trm0000096 CrossRef

10.

Dekel R, Goldblatt H (2008) Is there intergenerational transmission of trauma? The case of combat veterans’ children. Am J Orthopsychiatry 78:281–289. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013955 CrossRefPubMed

11.

Renshaw KD, Allen ES, Rhoades GK et al (2011) Distress in spouses of service members with symptoms of combat-related PTSD: secondary traumatic stress or general psychological distress? J Fam Psychol 25:461–469. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023994 CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

12.

American Psychiatric Association (2013) Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, DSM-5^®. Author, Washington, DCCrossRef

13.

Renshaw KD, Campbell SB (2011) Combat veterans’ symptoms of PTSD and partners’ distress: the role of partners’ perceptions of veterans’ deployment experiences. J Fam Psychol 25:953–962. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025871 CrossRefPubMed

14.

Herzog JR, Everson RB, Whitworth JD (2011) Do secondary trauma symptoms in spouses of combat-exposed national guard soldiers mediate impacts of soldiers’ trauma exposure on their children? Child Adolesc Soc Work J 28:459–473. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10560-011-0243-z CrossRef

15.

Lombardo KL, Motta RW (2008) Secondary trauma in children of parents with mental illness. Traumatology (Tallahass Fla) 14:57–67. https://doi.org/10.1177/1534765608320331 CrossRef

16.

Minuchin S (1974) Families and family therapy. Tavistock, London

17.

Monson CM, Fredman SJ, Dekel R (2010) Posttraumatic stress disorder in an interpersonal context. In: Beck JG (ed) Interpersonal processes in the anxiety disorders: Implications for understanding psychopathology and treatment. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, pp 179–208CrossRef

18.

Fredman SJ, Monson CM, Schumm JA et al (2010) Associations among disaster exposure, intimate relationship adjustment, and PTSD symptoms: can disaster exposure enhance a relationship? J Trauma Stress 23:446–451. https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.20555 CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

19.

Levin Y, Bachem R, Solomon Z (2016) Traumatization, marital adjustment, and parenting among veterans and their spouses: a longitudinal study of reciprocal relations. Fam Process 56:926–942. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12257 CrossRefPubMed

20.

Bachem R, Levin Y, Zhou X, Zerach G, Solomon Z (2018) The role of parental posttraumatic stress, marital adjustment, and dyadic self-disclosure in intergenerational transmission of trauma: a family system approach. J Marital Fam Ther 44:543–555. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmft.12266 CrossRefPubMed

21.

Dinshtein Y, Dekel R, Polliack M (2011) Secondary traumatization among adult children of PTSD veterans: the role of mother-child relationships. J Fam Soc Work 14:109–124. https://doi.org/10.1080/10522158.2011.544021 CrossRef

22.

Ginzburg K, Ein-Dor T, Solomon Z (2010) Comorbidity of posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression: a 20-year longitudinal study of war veterans. J Affect Disord 123:249–257. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2009.08.006 CrossRefPubMed

23.

Edmondson D, Chaudoir SR, Mills MA et al (2011) From shattered assumptions to weakened worldviews: trauma symptoms signal anxiety buffer disruption. J Loss Trauma 16:358–385. https://doi.org/10.1080/15325024.2011.572030 CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

24.

Dekel R, Monson CM (2010) Military-related post-traumatic stress disorder and family relations: current knowledge and future directions. Aggress Violent Behav 15:303–309. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2010.03.001 CrossRef

25.

Harkness LL (1993) Trangenerational transmission of war-related trauma. In: Wilson JP, Raphael B (eds) International handbook of traumatic stress syndromes. Plenum Press, New York, pp 635–643CrossRef

26.

Lester P, Aralis H, Sinclair M et al (2016) The impact of deployment on parental, family and child adjustment in military families. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev 47:938–949. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-016-0624-9 CrossRefPubMed

27.

Kellermann N (2019) Past, present and future perspectives of Holocaust trauma transmission. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.17884.23689

28.

Kins E, Soenens B, Beyers W (2011) “Why do they have to grow up so fast?” Parental separation anxiety and emerging adults’ pathology of separation-individuation. J Clin Psychol 67:647–664. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20786 CrossRefPubMed

29.

Bozhenko E (2011) Adult child-parent relationships: on the problem of classification. Proc Soc Behav Sci 30:1625–1629. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.10.315 CrossRef

30.

Luyckx K, Soenens B, Vansteenkiste M et al (2007) Parental psychological control and dimensions of identity formation in emerging adulthood. J Fam Psychol 21:546–550. https://doi.org/10.1037/0893-3200.21.3.546 CrossRefPubMed

31.

Monson CM, Gradus JL, La Bash HAJ et al (2009) The role of couples’ interacting world assumptions and relationship adjustment in women’s postdisaster PTSD symptoms. J Trauma Stress 22:276–281. https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.20432 CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

32.

Bronstein I, Levin Y, Lahav Y, Solomon Z (2016) World assumptions among wives of former prisoners of war. J Fam Issues 37:1746–1767. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X14565702 CrossRef

33.

Creech SK, Misca G (2017) Parenting with PTSD: a review of research on the influence of PTSD on parent–child functioning in military and veteran families. Front, Psychol, p 8

34.

Solomon Z, Horesh D, Ein-Dor T, Ohry A (2012) Predictors of PTSD trajectories following captivity: a 35-year longitudinal study. Psychiatry Res 199:188–194CrossRef

35.

Newman DA (2014) Missing data: five practical guidelines. Organ Res Methods 17:372–411. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094428114548590 CrossRef

36.

Elklit A, Shevlin M, Solomon Z, Dekel R (2007) Factor structure and concurrent validity of the world assumptions scale. J Trauma Stress 20:291–301. https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.20203 CrossRefPubMed

37.

Solomon Z, Benbenishty R, Neria Y et al (1993) Assessment of PTSD: validation of the revised PTSD Inventory. Isr J Psychiatry Relat Sci 30:110–115PubMed

38.

American Psychiatric Association (1994) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edn. American Psychiatric Publishing, Washington, DC, TR

39.

Solomon Z, Mikulincer M, Waysman M (1991) Delayed and immediate onset posttraumatic stress disorder: the role of life events and social resources. J Commun Psychol 19:231–236. https://doi.org/10.1002/1520-6629(199107)19:3%3c231:AID-JCOP2290190304%3e3.0.CO;2-C CrossRef

40.

Collins LMM, Schafer JLL, Kam C-MM (2001) A comparison of inclusive and restrictive strategies in modern missing data procedures. Psychol Methods 6:330–351. https://doi.org/10.1037/1082-989X.6.4.330 CrossRefPubMed

41.

Arbuckle JL (2014) Amos 23.0 user’s guide

42.

Hooper D, Coughlan J, Mullen MR (2008) Structural equation modeling: guidelines for determining model fit. Electron J Bus Res Methods 6:53–60. https://doi.org/10.1037/1082-989X.12.1.58 CrossRef

43.

Hu L-T, Bentler PM (1995) Evaluating model fit. In: Hoyle RH (ed) Structural equation modeling: concepts, issues, and applications. Sage Publications Inc, Thousand Oaks, pp 76–99

44.

Soper DS (2019) A priori sample size calculator for structural equation models [software]. http://www.danielsoper.com/statcalc

45.

Hayes AF (2013) Introduction to mediation, moderation and conditional process analysis: a regression-based approach. Guilford Press, New York

46.

Preacher KJ, Hayes AF (2008) Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models. Behav Res Methods 40:879–891. https://doi.org/10.3758/BRM.40.3.879 CrossRefPubMed

47.

Sobel ME (1982) Asymptotic confidence intervals for indirect effects in structural equation models. In: Leinhardt S (ed) Sociological Methodology. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, pp 290–312

48.

Ullmann E, Licino J, Perry SW et al (2018) Inherited anxiety-related parent–infant dyads alter LHPA activity. Stress 13:1–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/10253890.2018.1494151 CrossRef

49.

Zilberfein F (1996) Children of holocaust survivors: separation obstacles, attachments, and anxiety. Soc Work Health Care 23:35–55. https://doi.org/10.1300/J010v23n03_03 CrossRefPubMed

50.

Ullmann E, Barthel A, Licinio J et al (2013) Increased rate of depression and psychosomatic symptoms in Jewish migrants from the post-Soviet-Union to Germany in the 3rd generation after the Shoa. Transl Psychiatry 3:5–8. https://doi.org/10.1038/tp.2013.17 CrossRef

51.

Jones TL, Prinz RJ (2005) Potential roles of parental self-efficacy in parent and child adjustment: a review. Clin Psychol Rev 25:341–363. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2004.12.004 CrossRefPubMed

52.

Zerach G, Greene T, Ein-Dor T, Solomon Z (2012) The relationship between posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and paternal parenting of adult children among ex-prisoners of war: a longitudinal study. J Fam Psychol 26:274–284CrossRef

53.

Yancey AK, Siegel JM, McDaniel KL (2002) Role models, ethnic identity, and health-risk behaviors in urban adolescents. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 156:55–61. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpedi.156.1.55 CrossRefPubMed

54.

Dekel R, Goldblatt H, Solomon Z (2006) Trapped in captivity: marital perceptions of wives of former prisoners of war. Women Health 42:1–18. https://doi.org/10.1300/J013v42n03_01 CrossRef

55.

Roberman S (2007) Commemorative activities of the great war and the empowerment of elderly immigrant Soviet Jewish veterans in Israel. Anthropol Q 80:1035–1064. https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2007.0063 CrossRef

56.

Dekel R, Goldblatt H, Keidar M et al (2005) Being a wife of a veteran with posttraumatic stress disorder. Fam Relat 54:24–36. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0197-6664.2005.00003.x CrossRef

57.

Werner E (1990) Protective factors and individual resilience. In: Meisells R, ShonkofF J (eds) Handbook of early childhood intervention. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

58.

Cramer P (2018) Psychological identification with parents: Implications for late adolescent psychological adjustment. 01267:128–137

59.

Hair EC, Moore KA, Garrett SB et al (2008) The continued importance of quality parent–adolescent relationships during late adolescence. J Res Adolesc 18:187–200. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-7795.2008.00556.x CrossRef

60.

Sherman MD, Gress Smith JL, Straits-Troster K et al (2016) Veterans’ perceptions of the impact of PTSD on their parenting and children. Psychol Serv 13:401–410. https://doi.org/10.1037/ser0000101 CrossRefPubMed

61.

Blow AJ, Gorman L, Ganoczy D et al (2013) Hazardous drinking and family functioning in National Guard veterans and spouses postdeployment. J Fam Psychol 27:303–313. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031881 CrossRefPubMed

62.

Fredman SJ, Le Y, Marshall AD et al (2017) A dyadic perspective on PTSD symptoms’ associations with couple functioning and parenting stress in first-time parents. Couple Fam Psychol Res Pract 6:117–132. https://doi.org/10.1037/cfp0000079 CrossRef

63.

Sherman MD, Zanotti DK, Jones DE (2005) Key elements in couples therapy with veterans with combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder. Prof Psychol Res Pract 36:626–633. https://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7028.36.6.626 CrossRef

Title: The role of parental negative world assumptions in the intergenerational transmission of war trauma
Authors: Rahel Bachem
Johanna Scherf
Yafit Levin
Michela Schröder-Abé
Zahava Solomon
Publication date: 01-06-2020
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in: Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology / Issue 6/2020
Print ISSN: 0933-7954
Electronic ISSN: 1433-9285
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-019-01801-y

At a glance: The ONWARDS insulin icodec trials

Springer Medicine

The role of parental negative world assumptions in the intergenerational transmission of war trauma

Abstract

Purpose

Methods

Results

Conclusion

At a glance: The ONWARDS insulin icodec trials

Springer Medicine

Abstract

Purpose

Methods

Results

Conclusion

Please log in to get access to this content

Other articles of this Issue 6/2020

A comparison of prevalence and risk factor profiles of prolonged grief disorder among French and Togolese bereaved adults

Urbanization, and child mental health and life functioning in Vietnam: implications for global health disparities

Effects of early life adversity on immune function and cognitive performance: results from the ALSPAC cohort

Social capital and psychosis: a scoping review

From surviving to thriving: factors associated with complete mental health among childhood sexual abuse survivors

Mental health and prolonged exposure to unaffordable housing: a longitudinal analysis