Psychological Legacies of Intergenerational Trauma

Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health (ACAMH)

DOI: 10.13056/acamh.21594
In this podcast, we are joined by Dr. Andrew Wooyoung Kim, Assistant Professor in biological anthropology at the University of California.
Andrew is the first author of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (JCPP) paper ‘Psychological legacies of intergenerational trauma under South African apartheid: Prenatal stress predicts greater vulnerability to the psychological impacts of future stress exposure during late adolescence and early adulthood in Soweto, South Africa’ (doi: 10.1111/jcpp.13672), which is the focus of today’s podcast.
Andrew sets the scene by providing a brief introduction of how he came to be interested in this area of research, before turning to the paper itself and sharing a brief overview of the paper.
Andrew discusses the methodology used, including the challenges faced during the data collection, and shares the main findings from the paper.
Andrew then expands upon two interesting findings; the first being the finding that social support did not moderate the association between prenatal stress and psychiatric outcomes, and the second being that the prenatal stress exposure during apartheid is not directly associated with greater psychiatric morbidity during late adolescence.
With maternal age and past household adversity having been found to have an impact, Andrew also elaborates on these findings and their implications.
Furthermore, Andrew shares what the implications are of his findings for CAMH professionals, and comments on what role we should all be playing in recognising and addressing the ongoing legacies of colonialism, structural violence, and historical traumas, such as apartheid, in order to prevent future mental health inequities from emerging.