Are children of Holocaust survivors less well-adapted? A meta-analytic investigation of secondary traumatization

H. Keilson (1979) coined the term “sequential traumatization” for the accumulation of traumatic stresses confronting the Holocaust survivors before, during, and after the war. A central question is whether survivors were able to raise their children without transmitting the traumas of their past. Th...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of traumatic stress 2003-10, Vol.16 (5), p.459-469
Main Authors: van IJzendoorn, Marinus H., Bakermans-Kranenburg, Marian J., Sagi-Schwartz, Abraham
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation, Psychological
Adult
Adult and adolescent clinical studies
Aged
Anxiety disorders. Neuroses
Biological and medical sciences
Family environment. Family history
Female
Holocaust
Holocaust - psychology
Humans
Intergenerational Relations
Male
Medical sciences
Middle Aged
Parent-Child Relations
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Risk Factors
second generation
secondary traumatization
Social psychiatry. Ethnopsychiatry
stress-diathesis
Survivors - psychology
trauma
Wounds and Injuries - psychology
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:H. Keilson (1979) coined the term “sequential traumatization” for the accumulation of traumatic stresses confronting the Holocaust survivors before, during, and after the war. A central question is whether survivors were able to raise their children without transmitting the traumas of their past. Through a series of meta‐analyses on 32 samples involving 4,418 participatns, we tested the hypothesis of secondary traumatization in Holocaust survivor families. In the set of adequately designed nonclinical studies, no evidence for the influence of the parents' traumatic Holocaust experiences on their children was found. Secondary traumatization emerged only in studies on clinical participants, who were stressed for other reasons. A stress‐diathesis model is used to interpret the absence of secondary traumatization in nonclinical offspring of Holocaust survivors.
ISSN:0894-9867
1573-6598
DOI:10.1023/A:1025706427300