NIH: Trauma-based mental illness may be passed to offspring

Just like hair color, eye color, and risks for certain illness, trauma can be passed from generation to generation — even to those who didn’t directly experience the traumatic event. That’s according to a new study out of the National Institutes of Health, which analyzed adults whose parents evacuated Finland as children during World War II. The study, which appeared in JAMA Psychiatry, was conducted by researchers at the National Institutes of Health, Uppsala University in Sweden, and Helsinki University in Finland. According to a news release from NIH, the research team found that daughters of female evacuees had the same high risk for mental health disorders as their mothers, even though they did not experience the same adversity.

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