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                    The Montana Suicide Rate Reduction Council.

Founded in Missoula, Montana. August 06, 2021. 

Hate the fate. Reduce the rate.

Intergenerational Trauma ("I.T.") is the primary driving factor to the suicide crisis in Montana. 

The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services bears the specific responsibility to provide reasonably optimal health care services to each and every person living in our great state. Access to any type of health care and treatment is a fundamental human right. Montana fails to provide access to health care services in roughly 75-80% of the state, which represents our state's rural areas. Thus, any range of public health crises are an inevitable consequence. Montana's suicide crisis is a direct result under the abject absence of relevant services, mental health care services, generally speaking, and actual suicide crisis intervention resources, more specifically speaking. This is the primary causal factor (insufficient in quantitive terms, and inequitably provided in terms of public health care) and this is the inevitable result (our suicide crisis).

It is additionally true that any state lacking in access to mental health care services will suffer a range of negative impacts specific to untreated mental illness, such as potentially lethal violence towards others or towards to the property of others, or both, as well as suicide and other types of self harm that would be preventable were the these to services to be equitably provided. We don't hear enough about this latter reality, but it is very much the intent of MSRRC to change that fact, as well.

For now, thus, intergenerational suicide trauma, and as a simple tutorial, the following report. We are willing to provide DPHHS and the greater public  for it represents the means for solution to the suicide crisis in Montana. It will be noted, as well, that MSRRC has well justified concern over the increasingly apparent lack of qualifications in DPHHS, including with direct regard to those of the state's most entrusted suicide expert, Karl Rosston.   

Understanding Intergenerational trauma: An Introduction for Clinicians 

January 8, 2021 • By Dr. Fabiana Franco, PhD, DAAETS

Simple trauma describes a single, circumscribed traumatic event (such as an assault). Herein the worthlessness of looking at suicide in MT per single incident. Our suicide expert has proven most obviously that is the fact that he is no more able to address this suicide crisis than were only of his many predecessors, to date. Less loudly, however, is the man's reliance on a linear perspective towards what is, in fact, a nonlinear public health crisis. Most simply stated, this is illustrated by long running exponential increases in all risks known to be associated with suicide, these risks increasing in this way for the better part of the last century. 

Complex trauma occurs when a person experiences a series of repeated traumatic events or when new, unique traumatic incidents occur. Complex trauma early in life can damage multiple aspects of the child’s development. Complex trauma may involve entire families in incidents of violence, addiction, or poverty. Herein a first step to understanding the reality. While the suicide expert in MT refers to complexity in things that may or not even have direct bearing on this crisis, it is the complexity of trauma that he clearly doesn't understand.  

Historical Trauma

Historical trauma refers to traumatic experiences or events that are shared by a group of people within a society, or even by an entire community, ethnic, or national group. Historical trauma meets three criteria: widespread effects, collective suffering, and malicious intent (2). Historical Trauma Response (HTR) can manifest as substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, anger, violence, and difficulty in emotional regulation (3) Herein better yet clarification of the reality. Karl Rosston has provided nothing better in the interest of the public than did any of his predecessors.  

Intergenerational Trauma

Intergenerational trauma (sometimes referred to as trans- or multigenerational trauma) is defined as trauma that gets passed down from those who directly experience an incident to subsequent generations. Intergenerational trauma may begin with a traumatic event affecting an individual, traumatic events affecting multiple family members, or collective trauma affecting larger community, cultural, racial, ethnic, or other groups/populations (historical trauma). Herein, Mr. Rosston's lack of qualifications, step one. To the extent that the man knows something about preventing one suicide at a time, he has also made very evident that he knows little what about intergenerational trauma, both in its most straightforward form, as well as in more complex forms. 

Intergenerational trauma was first identified among the children of Holocaust survivors (4), but recent research has identified intergenerational trauma among other groups such as indigenous populations in North America and Australia (3)(5). In 1988, one study showed that children of Holocaust survivors were overrepresented in psychiatric referrals by 300% (6). The subjects were selected based on having at least one parent or grandparent who was a survivor. Herein Mr. Rosston's lack of qualifications, step two. The state of Montana's American Indian nations have suffered the impacts of a genocidal system of colonization. Genocide and trauma are also things that this man is not qualified to so much as comment on, much less so, to oversee the suicide crisis as though qualified. 

PARENTING AS AN EXPLANATION FOR THE PHENOMENON OF INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA

Trauma’s Effects on Parents

Parents may transmit inborn genetic vulnerabilities triggered by their own traumatic experience or via parenting styles that have been impacted by their trauma (7). Survivors face many challenges when they are parents, including difficulty bonding to and creating healthy emotional attachments with their children. Yael Danieli categorized four adaptation styles amongst the families of survivors: Numb, Victim, Fighters, and Those Who Made It. Survivors who become numb seek silence by self-isolating, have a very low tolerance for stimulation of any kind, and are minimally involved in raising their children. Victims fear and distrust the outside world, try to remain inconspicuous, and are frequently depressed and quarrelsome. Fighters focus on succeeding at all costs and retaining an armor of strength, making them intolerant of weakness or self-pity. Those Who Made It are characterized by their pursuit of socio-economic success but also by the ways in which they intentionally distance themselves both from their experience of trauma and from other survivors (8). This is a fairly accurate description of the looming reality in Montana. To the extent that there are certain complexities to suicide as whole, they are beyond the knowledge base of any social worker. In Montana, the sole issue at stake is very plain and very simple. It can be looked as anything whatsoever as long as it's not the same line of rhetoric and bureaucratic dysfunction that DPHHS has reflected for time immemorial. However, there are actual and rather irrefutable courses for solution in the same context, and we need to look no further than to other rural US states that have proven their capacity to manage the risks associated with suicide. Systems of equitably provided systems of public health care are the standard in other US states, just not in Motnana. 

Children experience and understand the world primarily through direct caregivers and are, therefore, profoundly affected by their parents’ modeling. Children both mimic their parents’ behaviors and learn to navigate future relationships based on how they learned to relate to their parents. Enduring coping mechanisms may be forged out of efforts to avoid and/or “fix” a parent’s abusive behavior, anger, depression, neglect, or other problematic behaviors. This is also a safety issue in every way, and MT kids are greatly unsafe and highly at risk of otherwise preventable harm. At latest report, MT kids die by suicide at twice the national rate of youth suicides. The inherent danger of suicide is facing our children today, and we have a system of public health care that is overwhelmingly bureaucratic in character, the hallmark of which is deep set resistance to change. Our founder was a child when his father died by suicide, and therein he is walking testimony to these specific truths. 

To the extent that the risks associated with suicide in MT may someday diminish to a same level that citizens in other state take for granted, that day is still a long distance away. In the meantime, to generate any nature of real change, the runaway spread of intergenerational suicide trauma as it exists in Montana today clerkly needs for more than anything we have ever seen, paid for, and been asked to accept as a perverted as hell norm. Highly medically trained trauma professionals, for starters, while terms such as "trauma informed" just don't cut it, anymore.

Next up, a consideration of the most recent news coverage specific to Montana suicide crisis.

Our founder.

dirtiestsecretmontana@gmail.com