Transgenerational trauma can be a collective experience that affects groups of people who share a cultural identity (e.g., ethnicity, nationality, or religious identity). For example, if Jewish people experience extreme stress or practice survivalism out of fear of another Holocaust, despite being born after the Holocaust, then they are experiencing transgenerational trauma. When this collective trauma affects subsequent generations, it is called transgenerational trauma. For example, collective trauma was experienced by Jewish Holocaust survivors and other members of the Jewish community at the time, by the Indigenous Peoples of Canada during the Canadian Indian residential school system and by black Americans who were enslaved. Ĭollective trauma is when psychological trauma experienced by communities and identity groups is carried on as part of the group's collective memory and shared sense of identity. The term intergenerational transmission refers to instances whereby the traumatic effects are passed down from the directly traumatized generation to their offspring, and transgenerational transmission is when the offspring then pass the effects down to descendants who have not been exposed to the initial traumatic event - at least the grandchildren of the original sufferer for males, and their great-grandchildren for females. The primary modes of transmission are the uterine environment during pregnancy causing epigenetic changes in the developing embryo, and the shared family environment of the infant causing psychological, behavioral and social changes in the individual.

Transgenerational trauma is the psychological and physiological effects that the trauma experienced by people has on subsequent generations in that group. ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) WikiProject Genetics may be able to help recruit an expert. The specific problem is: The article contains multiple pseudoscientific claims, such as that dance therapy can change someone's DNA. This article needs attention from an expert in genetics.

Definition of intergenerational trauma