Understanding the Historical Influences on Contemporary Assessment and Counseling Issues of African American Offenders

Spatial Epidemiology of Alcohol‐ and Drug‐Related Health Problems Among Northern Plains American Indians: Nebraska and South Dakota, 2007 to 2012

“…These conditions are not unlike those which have deprived minority Black populations of access to economic and social resources for many decades and multiple generations (Dymski & Mason, 2005). Although lifetime experiences of trauma and post-traumatic stress have been associated with behavioral health risks in Hispanic populations (Ehlers et al, 2016; Melroy-Greif, Wilhelmsen, Yehuda, & Ehlers, 2017), these effects are magnified and maintained–affectively and perhaps genetically–in populations for whom large-scale major traumas continue to be experienced across generations, as historical trauma (Ehlers, Gizer, Gilder, Ellingson, & Yehuda, 2013; Nutton & Fast, 2015; Soto, Baezconde-Garbanati, Schwartz, & Unger, 2015; Sule et al, 2017; Truesdale-Moore, 2017). Recent research links “historical trauma” to changes in DNA methylation (so-called epigenetic changes) (Aguiar & Halseth, 2013; Brockie, Heinzelmann, & Gill, 2013), although among American Indians and Alaska Natives this research may be limited by indigenous people’s understandable reluctance to provide tissue for such analyses (Lock, 2015).…”