This study aims to (i) understand how the legacies of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi and its aftermath are transmitted to the next generation within Rwandan families and (ii) explore how... Show moreThis study aims to (i) understand how the legacies of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi and its aftermath are transmitted to the next generation within Rwandan families and (ii) explore how institutional support plays a role in the pathways of intergenerational transmission. Through an in-depth analysis of qualitative interviews with 41 mothers and one of their adolescent children, we identified direct and indirect pathways through which the legacies of the genocide are transmitted to the second generation. Direct pathways concern the ways in which the genocide and its aftermath are reflected upon, reconstructed and explicitly communicated or silenced to the second generation. Indirect pathways are ways in which the genocide and its aftermath affect the life circumstances of the children, and through that, the child. Many of the included households had access to at least some kind of support. In general, our results indicate that organisations providing support to families and individuals in post-conflict settings might want to consider focusing explicitly on the identified pathways of intergenerational transmission to improve the living conditions of the next generation(s). Show less
Socio-ecological interventions assume that there are ‘links’ between the individual process that determinesdisaster mental health and the social context one lives in. However, there is insufficient... Show moreSocio-ecological interventions assume that there are ‘links’ between the individual process that determinesdisaster mental health and the social context one lives in. However, there is insufficient empirical basis for this claim. This paper summarizes the main findings from a research programme, in which two advanced statistical techniques on data from two floods were applied, respectively Uttar Pradesh, India 2008 and Morpeth, England, 2008. By means of multilevel structural equation modelling it was found that individual psychosocial resources (coping behaviour and social support) are employed more parsimoniously and effectively when disaster affected individuals can rely on a trustworthy and effective social community. Additionally, usingmultilevel con¢rmatory factor analyses to address screening outcomes yielded two methodologicalproblems: nested variance due to the disaster context and poor construct validity.These can be illustrated,but not dismissed without applying advanced statistical analyses. The findings strongly suggest that community interventions promoting social context and individual interventions not only share the same objective, but also impact mental health via the same individual mechanisms. Show less
