Psychoanalytic Training Institute“There is a wisdom in our bodies.”
About Dr. Yehuda’s study of epigenetics and the transmission of trauma from one generation to the next. Her studies on the children of Holocaust survivors as well as on the infants born to women who were pregnant during the attacks of September 11 revealed that the children of parents who’d been traumatized are, themselves, three times more likely than controls to experience PTSD if exposed to a traumatic event and exhibit hormonal irregularities (specifically, low cortisol levels) normally seen in those with PTSD (e.g., Transgenerational transmission of cortisol and PTSD risk, Yehuda & Beirer, 2007 – http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079612307670095).
She says that a recent study of hers has also shown “epigenetic changes in response to psychotherapy.”