A three-part research study Examining the Relationship Between PTSD Symptoms in Parents & their Offspring; Comparing First & Second Generation Survivors on Biological Variables; and Exploring Subgroups of Offspring & Comparing Urinary Cortisol Excretion in Offspring to that of Demographically. This chapter will illustrate the approaches used by our group to arrive at different types of comparisons. Three such approaches and studies will be described. The first approach has been to try and examine the relationships between offspring and their own parents. A second approach has been to compare first and second generation Holocaust survivors without consideration of familial relationship (i.e., comparing a group of Holocaust survivors to a group of similarly selected, but not related offspring of Holocaust survivors) on variables of interest. A third approach is been to explore different subgroups of second generation offspring and compare these subgroups to demographically-matched controls (i.e., Jewish adults with non-European born parents). The following represents preliminary findings from work-in-progress.
Source: Rachel Yehuda, Ph.D. Jim Schmeidler, Ph.D. Abbie Elkin, B.A. Elizabeth Houshmand, B.A. Larry Siever, M.D. Karen Binder-Brynes, Ph.D. Milton Wainberg, M.D. Dan Aferiot, M..S.W. Alan Lehman, M.S.W. Ling Song Guo, M.D. Ren Kwei Yang, M.D. Trauma Information Pages (second revision, 1997); Originally published in: Danieli Y. Intergenerational Handbook of Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma. (1998)