Laboratory Equipment reveals that there’s a plus to experiencing trauma. Your kids will have a lower risk of PTSD:
Last year, junior investigator Sharon Dekel and Prof. Zahava Solomon of [Tel Aviv University’s] Bob Shapell School of Social Work found that individuals with Holocaust-survivor parents may be less likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder in the wake of their own traumas. In a study published in the Journal of Traumatic Stress, the researchers set out to see if so-called second-generation Holocaust survivors also undergo more post-traumatic “growth.”
“Post-traumatic growth can be defined as a workable coping mechanism, a way of making and finding meaning involved in the building of a more positive self-image and the perception of personal strength,” says Dekel.
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In an earlier study, Dekel and Solomon found that veterans of Israel’s Yom Kippur War were less likely to experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and related conditions many years after combat if they were also second-generation Holocaust survivors. The researchers proposed several explanations, including that children of trauma survivors may have acquired coping mechanisms from their parents that helped protect them from traumas in their own lives.
With this theory in mind, they returned to combat veterans of the Yom Kippur War for their latest study. Using self-report questionnaires, the researchers assessed post-traumatic growth in the veterans 30 and 35 years after the war. They report that, contrary to their expectations, second-generation Holocaust survivors had consistently lower post-traumatic growth levels than non-second generation survivors across times.
The second-generation Holocaust survivors, therefore, don’t experience their own traumas as “trauma virgins” would, since they are already conditioned by their parents’ experience — and, therefore, themselves experience no growth.