Intergenerational Colonial Trauma Syndrome (ICTS) : A Critical Framework for Understanding the Continuum of Genocidal Trauma

This paper introduces the concept of Intergenerational Colonial Trauma Syndrome (ICTS) as a necessary intervention in trauma studies, critiquing the Western psychiatric model that frames trauma as a discrete past event. PTSD, a widely accepted framework, assumes that trauma occurs as an isolated moment, after which healing is possible. However, for colonized and oppressed populations experiencing ongoing systemic violence, forced displacement, and genocide, trauma is not a past event but a continuous, inherited condition that is structurally reinforced.