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Children in families of torture victims: transgenerational transmission of parents’ traumatic experiences to their children
Author(s) -
Daud Atia,
Skoglund Erling,
Rydelius PerAnders
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
international journal of social welfare
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.664
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1468-2397
pISSN - 1369-6866
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2397.2005.00336.x
Subject(s) - torture , psychosocial , anxiety , psychiatry , traumatic stress , clinical psychology , psychology , depression (economics) , ethnic group , medicine , political science , law , human rights , sociology , anthropology , economics , macroeconomics
This article details a study to test the hypothesis that immigrant children whose parents have been tortured before coming to Sweden suffer from depressive symptoms, post‐traumatic stress symptoms, somatisation and behavioural disorders. Fifteen families where at least one of the parents had experienced torture were compared with fifteen families from a similar ethnic and cultural background where their parents might have experienced violence but not torture. The parents were investigated using interviews, the Karolinska Scales of Personality (KSP) and Harvard/Uppsala Trauma Questionnaire (H/UTQ). The children were assessed using the DICA‐interview according to DSM‐IV. On the H/UTQ test, traumatised parents scored higher with respect to post‐traumatic stress disorder, depression, somatisation, anxiety and psychosocial stress symptoms. On the KSP, they scored higher on nine of the fifteen sub‐scales. The fathers in the tortured group scored higher than their wives only on the sub‐scale for guilt. According to the DICA‐interviews, the children of tortured parents had more symptoms of anxiety, depression, post‐traumatic stress, attention deficits and behavioural disorders compared with the comparison group. Social workers, psy‐chiatrists, psychologists and teachers need to be aware of a possible transmission of parents’ traumatic experiences to their children and to develop treatment methods for children of torture victims.