Do parents pass along posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to their children? Researchers from Universidade do Porto in Portugal, say although it seems a reasonable possibility, the “degree of controversy is high,” and studies have had conflicting results. For instance, some research has found that children of war veterans with PTSD have higher depression scores and higher rates of aggression and anxiety. While other research has shown no differences between veterans’ and nonveterans’ children.
The Universidade do Porto study involved 46 veterans of Portugal’s war with Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea from 1961 to 1974. The researchers studied the association of war veterans’ PTSD lifetime diagnosis and war exposure intensity with the self-reported psychopathology of their adult offspring, assessed 40 years after the end of the war. They also studied childhood adversities and attachment patterns, which have been implicated in intergenerational transmission of trauma and PTSD.
Both veterans and offspring were assessed via questionnaires, clinical interviews, and symptom scales, including the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI). The veterans also answered the War Experiences Questionnaire. Offspring of fathers with PTSD were not different from offspring of fathers without PTSD, with respect to age, gender, socioeconomic status, and marital status.
The researchers found no association between the veterans’ lifetime PTSD and their children’s psychopathology, attachment dimensions, and self-reported overall childhood maltreatment. The fathers’ war experience carried more weight. It seemed, the researchers say, that the children were able to overcome living with a parent’s PTSD symptoms, but they were less resilient when it came to their fathers’ war experience.
Veterans’ war exposure was associated with BSI in the offspring with regard to somatization, phobic anxiety, Global Severity Index, and Positive Symptom Distress Index. It was also associated with offspring’s physical neglect as a childhood adversity.
These findings could have considerable social importance, the researchers say. They suggest that mental health support could benefit the children especially if provided early after highly traumatized veterans return from war, “not just later on—if and when they develop PTSD.”