Intergenerational trauma in Latinxs: A scoping review

Abstract

Rationale: Intergenerational trauma refers to emotional and psychological wounding that is transmitted across generations. Latinxs-individuals who have migrated from Latin America to the United States or Canada and their descendants-are particularly vulnerable to intergenerational trauma due to legacies of colonialism, political violence, and migration-related stressors.

Objective: This scoping review aims to survey and synthesize the extant literature on intergenerational trauma in Latinxs, the ways that the literature conceptualizes and operationalizes intergenerational trauma, and the mechanisms of transmission that it proposes.

Method: We identified and screened 7788 abstracts using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) statement and checklist.

Results: We synthesized 44 articles published between 1994 and 2020, including 10 qualitative and 34 quantitative or mixed-methods studies. Qualitative studies more frequently placed intergenerational trauma within frameworks of structural vulnerability and historical and political violence, whereas quantitative studies tended to conceptualize trauma as discrete events or individual-level distress.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that current paradigms within this field are constrained by their focus on individual risk factors and parenting-particularly mothering-behaviors, at the expense of cultural, structural, and historical context. We highlight multiple gaps in the literature and call for further research that (1) geographically represents Latinx communities; (2) includes individuals with intersectional identities; (3) deploys culturally-adapted instruments and measures; (4) focuses on caregivers and factors outside the maternal-child relationship; (5) examines the concept of biological embedding; and (6) more thoroughly considers the impacts of historical trauma and structural violence on Latinx communities.

Keywords: Child health; Hispanic; Historical trauma; Intergenerational trauma; Latinx; Mental health; Migration; Post-traumatic stress disorder.