Surviving early childhood trauma : effects of the holocaust on survivors' psychological and physiolocial well-being

Psychological, neurobiological and genetics characteristics of Holocaust child survivors and their daughters were studied in population-wide demographic sample in comparison to matched control groups. Sixty years following the occurrence of the trauma, survivors still report more dissociative symptoms in everyday life, less satisfaction with their lives, and they also perceive their life events as more stressful compared to control group. Moreover, these survivors show more cognitive impairment than their comparisons. Nonetheless, adult offspring of survivors were not different from their comparisons. Survivors also showed elevated levels of daily cortisol secretion than did their comparisons, whereas cortisol level was the same in adult offspring of survivors and their counterparts. But, offspring of survivors with more dissociative symptoms showed lower levels of cortisol production over the day than did offspring of survivors with less dissociation. When exposed to stress, Holocaust survivors displayed elevated levels of cortisol secretion immediately before the onset of the stress, followed by a strong decline of cortisol levels. Nonetheless, comparison participants without Holocaust background showed the expected increase of cortisol levels in response to induced stress. Adult offspring of Holocaust survivors did not display different cortisol reactivity in response to stress than that of their counterparts. Finally, results showed that Holocaust survivors with the wildtype ADRA2B displayed higher cortisol levels than did their comparisons with the same genotype. No difference was found between these groups among carriers of the deletion variant. In sum, although survivors themselves suffer from post traumatic symptomatology, and their offspring may show neurobiological markers of secondary traumatization if their parents still show more dissociative symptomatology, (adult) children of Holocaust survivors show no psychological issues caused by their parents' trauma.