Kini Chang on Intergenerational Trauma, Resilience, and Collective Healing

This summer CIIS hosted a free series of online workshops on the science and healing of intergenerational trauma, led by Community Mental Health Chair, Kini Chang. Building on her 20-plus years of counseling experience, Chang guided workshop attendees through three hour-long sessions covering the history, theory, and treatment of harms affecting many generations of the same family, community, or population.

In honor of the World Health Organization’s World Mental Health Day, CIIS is sharing the recordings of these livestreamed workshops, in the hopes that they can serve as a resource for collective healing. In Part 1, Chang introduces the history of racialization, colonization, and how they have shaped enduring, intergenerational patterns of mental and physical health. The workshop includes the voices of attendees, who asked topical questions and offered examples and perspectives from their own lives and family backgrounds.

The conversation continues over the two following sessions, included in the playlist on YouTube: Part 2 covers the science of intergenerational trauma, including epigenetics, conditioned behaviors, fears, and modes of interaction, and the persistence of mental health conditions such chronic anxiety. Part 3 moves into techniques and practices for collective care: how practitioners can break the cycles of trauma transmission and nurture healthy resilience in impacted individuals and communities. 

Kini Chang, LMFT, is Core Faculty and Chair of the M.A. in Counseling Psychology concentration in Community Mental Health. At CIIS, she has the opportunity to build a culturally and racially inclusive community of students, faculty, and leadership that embodies diversity and equity. Learn more about the work of faculty in Community Mental Health and the Department of Counseling Psychology, or consider a donation to the Community Mental Health Scholarship Fund.