| |
| |
| |
Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
 | |
|
Coping in old age with extreme childhood trauma
— aging Holocaust survivors and their offspring facing new challenges | | Author(s) | Ayala Fridman, Marian J Bakermans-Kranenburg, Abraham Sagi-Schwartz, Marinus H Van IJzendoorn |
| Journal title | Aging & Mental Health, vol 15, no 2, March 2011 |
| Pages | pp 232-242 |
| Source | http://www.tandfonline.com |
| Keywords | Irish people ; War ; Older women ; Mental health [elderly] ; Stress ; Life satisfaction ; Children [offspring]. |
| Annotation | Survivors of the Jewish Holocaust are only now in the process of coping with normal ageing processes. Childhood trauma may leave the survivors more vulnerable when they are facing stress related to old age, and their offspring may have a challenging role of protecting their parents from further pain. This study aimed to examine the psychological adaptation of Holocaust survivors and their offspring in light of these new challenges, examining satisfaction with life, mental health, cognitive abilities, dissociative symptoms, and physical health. Careful matching of female Holocaust survivors and comparison subjects living in Israel was employed to form a case-control study design with two generations, including four groups: 32 older female Holocaust survivors and 47 daughters, and 33 older women in the comparison group, and 32 daughters. Participants completed several measures of mental and physical health, and their cognitive functioning was examined. Holocaust survivors showed more dissociative symptomatology and less satisfaction with their life compared to the matched group. However adult offspring of Holocaust survivors showed no differences in their physical, psychological, and cognitive functioning as compared to matched controls. In conclusion, Holocaust survivors still display posttraumatic stress symptoms almost 70 years after the trauma, whereas no intergenerational transmission of trauma was found among the second generation. (JL). |
| Accession Number | CPA-110801003 A |
| Classmark | TKC: VMC: BD: D: QNH: F:5HH: SS |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
|
| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
| |
|
|