Trauma has profound implications for mental and physical health. Historical trauma can create health inequities centuries later. Indigenous generational trauma and health disparities are interconnected.

The past few years have revealed injustice throughout so many layers of society.

The coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement have brutally exposed racial and socioeconomic injustices. It is now impossible to hold on to the airbrushed narratives of the past. Indigenous generational trauma and health disparities must be recognized as ongoing and remedied.

Thanksgiving, for example, is a beloved holiday for many people in America, but it is also a controversial one, riddled with historical inaccuracies.

For some people, memories of genocide, colonialism, and historical trauma supercede its associations with peace, harmony, and understanding.

As American Indian health experts have pointed out, reckoning with historical trauma and the impact it has had on the health and well-being of entire populations is the first step toward achieving health equity.

On Native American Heritage Day and every day, it’s important to examine the impact of historical trauma on present-day inequities among American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities, as seen in the research of experts on the subject.

When it comes to Indigenous generational trauma and health disparities, few groups are as underserved as AI/AN populations. The health disparities in this group are stark.

This was made clear in a talk given by Roger Dale Walker, MD, director of the One Sky Center for American Indian/Alaska Native health, education, and research, at the 2020 Journalism Summit on Infectious Disease.

In a speech entitled “Native behavioral health during COVID-19,” Dr. Walker outlined the Indigenous generational trauma and health disparities in morbidity even before the pandemic.

He noted that a number of conditions were alarmingly more prevalent and severe in AI/AN individuals than in the general population, citing:

  • a sixfold higher risk of alcohol use disorder
  • a sixfold higher risk of tuberculosis
  • a 3.5 times higher risk of diabetes
  • a threefold higher risk of depression
  • a twofold higher risk of suicide

Read the full article about Indigenous generational trauma and health disparities at MedicalNewsToday.