• May 24, 2019
• By admin
• Opinions

Breaking the Cycle of Psychological Trauma

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By Kalisa Joseph

After the atrocities of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in which more than 1 million people were exterminated in the period of 100 days, not one individual would have predicted its impact on the society. Scientist’s especially mental health professionals dealt with the immediate outcomes which included psychological trauma. Though there was a lack of skilled personnel to tackle this psychological trauma, efforts were made to console the traumatized nation, and this saw different programs put into place and non-government organizations established specially to help genocide survivors.

24 years down the road, one would come to a conclusion that the problem of psychological trauma may soon be history, and the nation may attain full healing which has been a dream for decades. Contrary to this, we are witnessing a new form of psychological trauma with symptoms similar to those who lived through the traumatizing events but manifested in a generation born after genocide. This is not the only category of people expressing such symptoms, other categories include, children or people who lived outside the country, children of survivors of genocide, and children born from different groups i.e. a perpetrator and survivor. The mechanisms this type of transmission of trauma manifested in the second generation is still not known by many but we can find the answer in direct transmission or indirect transmission.

Directly, the parenting style may be interfered by the parents’ hesitance to respond to their children due to their unresolved trauma with those born from perpetrators suffering profound shame and guilt. Some traumatized parents also tend to find ease in sharing their traumatizing experiences with their children irrespective of the mental maturity of children, thereby impacting the child’s view of the environment and this coupled with association that is usually embedded in developmental stages of children, makes it inevitable to resist the transmission of psychological trauma.  Association has also played a part in the transmission of psychological trauma even to those who were not in Rwanda during genocide, this is basically after identifying themselves with the traumatizing experiences that their relatives passed through. Not always is this parent-child transmission being visible just like electricity can be invisibly carried from a transmitter to a receiver; it is possible that unconscious experiences can also be transmitted from parents to their children through some complex process of extra-sensory communication. One can summarize this from the Rwandan saying that goes “Umuntu atanga icyo afite” loosely translates that one offers what s/he has.

Another important aspect that is being investigated by scientists on the matter is the epigenetic transmission in which certain gene mutations have been associated with children whose mothers where pregnant during genocide and although the transmission is not a guarantee for this matter, the vulnerability of such children to psychological trauma is inevitable.
It is important to note that transmission isn’t limited to trauma but also other psychological aspects like resistance and resilience. These aspects have been responsible for the healing and forgiveness seen in most of the Rwandan people.

In conclusion, the work done by Never Again Rwanda and other Peace building institutions is to foster the healing process so as to stop the transmission of this type of trauma in the young generation. This can be seen in the recently held seminar ‘Relevance of Psychology in Peace Building’ that was held in the University of Rwanda, organized by Never Again Rwanda in collaboration with Clinical Psychology Students Association which looked at embracing the understanding of human psychodynamics, resilience and active bystander citizen participation.