Cultural factors and differences
Cultural factors and differences
Cultural factors and differences, including religious beliefs, greatly affect the way grief is expressed and understood. Some cultures believe in restraint and beliefs such as fatalism which mean “life and death are decreed by fate” used by the Chinese (Stelzer et al, 2020). This is why cultural competence in validating grief to provide the proper support needed for the bereaved. Some cultural differences can be so deeply rooted that may cause silence leading to failure to disclose information. This silence can exacerbate the effects of trauma possibly leading to deteriorating mental health, physical well-being, and cognitive capacity (Hudson et al., 2015). It is important that healthcare providers evaluate the expression of silence that can be used as a protective mechanism or nondisclosure. I believe that intergenerational trauma or grief exhibited in many of family members in the movie Interiors clearly shows how exposure to adverse events impacts offspring to great extents. In addition, there are several studies in the works to ascertain if female offspring are directly exposed to stressors through the intrauterine environment during gestation (Yehuda & Lehrner, 2018). Mom, Geraldine from the movie Interiors, has a history of withholding her emotions. I agree with Hudson et al. (2015) when suggested that one unhealed generation allows the transmission of problems to subsequent generations. His is what happened to Geraldine’s daughters. I think that intergenerational trauma run in several families including my own. I think my mother’s intergenerational trauma and silence thereof adversely affected her as well as my six siblings. My mother had to quit school while trying to complete the 6th grade but had to take care of her younger siblings. She was exposed to physical violence of her grandparents and parents as well as experiencing it in her own marriage. This turned into complex trauma because it involved so many families with incidence of violence to two of my brothers addicted to drugs. Therefore, intergenerational trauma is a snowball effect from generation to generation. I also believe that parenting has a huge effect on intergenerational trauma because a lot of parents raise their children how they were raised whether good or bad. This could affect children in a negative or positive way. References Hudson, C., Adams, S., & Lauderdale, J. (2015). Cultural expressions of intergenerational trauma and mental health nursing implications for u.s. health care delivery following refugee resettlement. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 27(3), 286–301. https://doi.org/10.1177/1043659615587591 Stelzer, E. M., Zhou, N., Maercker, A., O’Connor, M. F., & Killikelly, C. (2020). Prolonged grief disorder and the cultural crisis. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 2982. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02982 Yehuda, R., & Lehrner, A. (2018). Intergenerational transmission of trauma effects: putative role of epigenetic mechanisms. World psychiatry :official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), 17(3), 243–257. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20568
