2013/01/01 by Nigel P. Field, Sophear Muong, Vannavuth Sochanvimean · 2 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Family Support in Illness #Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health #Migration, Health and Trauma
paper · doi:10.1111/ajop.12057
crossref issued 2013/01/01 · crossref published 2013/01/01 · crossref published-online 2013/01/01 · openalex publication_date 2013/01/01 · crossref created 2013/10/28 · crossref deposited 2024/02/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
The impact of parental styles in intergenerational transmission of trauma among mothers who survived the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, in power from 1975 to 1979, and their teenaged children was examined in 2 studies. In Study 1, 46 Cambodian female high school students and their mothers were recruited. Each daughter completed anxiety and depression measures as well as assessment of her mother's role-reversing, overprotective, and rejecting parental styles, whereas the mothers completed measures of their trauma exposure during the Khmer Rouge regime and PTSD symptoms. In support of trauma transmission, the mother's PTSD symptoms were predictive of her daughter's anxiety. Moreover, the mother's role-reversing parental style was shown to mediate the relationship between her own and her daughter's symptoms. In support of their generalizability, the results were replicated in Study 2 in a Cambodian-American refugee sample comparing 15 mental health treatment-seeking mothers and their teenaged children with 17 nontreatment-seeking mother-child pairs. The implications of the findings within the larger literature on intergenerational trauma transmission stemming from genocide are discussed.