Spotlight Series: Health Impacts of Intergenerational Trauma

Description

Join Melissa Walls (Bois Forte and Couchiching First Nation Anishinaabe), director of the Great Lakes Hub for the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health, for a conversation on how historical and intergenerational trauma impacts Indigenous communities and how Native strengths, culture, and resilience prevail in the face of injustice. Walls is also an associate professor of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Traumatic experiences have lasting consequences on physical and emotional health. Whether the negative experiences happened during childhood, as an adult, or were single or repeat experiences, traumatic events can cause anxiety, depression, and hypertension, potentially leading to heart attack or stroke, among other physical and emotional health issues. What are the impacts of historically anchored traumatic events over the course of several generations?