HITT-Q was developed based on the experiences of the descendants of Holocaust victims, but the phenomenon of transgenerational transmission of trauma is not limited to a single historical experience. Famine, genocide, war, occupation, deportations, repression, colonial violence—every culture carries its own architecture of collective trauma. The international network of HITT-Q adaptations is being formed precisely in response to this diversity of historical contexts.
The United States and Canada are the countries where the methodology was developed by its authors—Dr. Vera Bekesh (Ferkauff School of Psychology, Yeshiva University, New York, USA) and Dr. Claire Starrs (Department of Psychology, University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada).
HITT-Q is spreading worldwide through local adaptations in countries with their own traumatic histories.
The map shows the international HITT-Q network (as of May 2026). Take a look at a brief description of some of the current research questions and processes.
Hungary
One of the most severely affected contexts of the Holocaust in Europe: the mass deportations of 1944 affected hundreds of thousands of people.
Current status: Children (n = 599) and grandchildren (n = 311) of survivors were surveyed. This is the first systematic quantitative assessment of the psychological impact of the Holocaust in an Eastern European country. More intense trauma-related parenting styles were associated with higher adaptive stress and a greater number of symptoms in the second and third generations. The study became one of the empirical foundations of the HITT model.
Publication: DOI: 10.1037/ort0000758
Czech Republic, Slovakia
The Holocaust left a deep mark on Czech and Slovak families—both through deportations to Terezín and Auschwitz and through the decades of totalitarian silence that followed.
Research question: What biological (neuroendocrine, epigenetic, structural-brain) and psychological markers of transgenerational transmission of Holocaust trauma can be identified in the children and grandchildren of survivors—and how are they linked to the traumatic experiences of the first generation?
Ukraine
Layers of trauma have accumulated: the Holodomor, Soviet repression, deportations—and full-scale war. A generation of Ukrainians finds itself at the intersection of historical and contemporary trauma.
Research question: How does the experience of previous generations interact with contemporary war-related trauma? What patterns of family vulnerability and resilience are activated in wartime conditions?
Current status: the Ukrainian-language adaptation of the HITT-Q has been completed. Research is ongoing: data collection on civilian and military samples, in-depth analysis of individual model factors.
Publications: DOI:10.48020/mppj.2025.02.11; DOI:10.51647/kelm.2025.5.9; DOI: 10.32782/hbts.77.1.4
Bulgaria
The legacy of the totalitarian period in Bulgaria is still felt in the social fabric—particularly in some of the lowest levels of trust in institutions and among individuals in Europe.
Research question: How is the legacy of historical trauma linked to the erosion of social and institutional capital in contemporary Bulgarian society? Is it possible to empirically trace a connection between family experiences of repression and today’s patterns of distrust?
Romania
The decades of the Ceaușescu regime, the Securitate’s pervasive surveillance, and mass repression have left their mark on several generations of Romanian families.
Research question: How is the legacy of the communist period transmitted to subsequent generations? What mechanisms of silence, forgetting, and resentment—specific to the post-communist space—shape the clinical picture among descendants?
West Africa and the Caribbean
The transatlantic slave trade left a traumatic legacy on both sides of the Atlantic—in continental Africa and among the Caribbean diaspora.
Research question: How do the experiences of ancestors who were victims of the slave trade continue to manifest in their descendants? What cultural, somatic, and symbolic forms does this transmission take in West Africa compared to the Caribbean—and do common structural patterns persist despite the geographical divide?
Vietnam
A single family history often involves multiple layers of colonial and wartime trauma: the French occupation, the Japanese occupation, the famine of 1944–1945, the war, the loss of ancestral land, and postwar migration.
Research question: How is this multi-layered legacy passed down through generations in Vietnamese families; what role do migration and the diaspora context play in its reworking?
Algeria
French colonialism and the subsequent “Black Decade”—the civil war of the 1990s—have created two successive layers of collective trauma, the effects of which are evident in contemporary Algerian society.
Research question: How are these two layers of trauma transmitted to subsequent generations, and how do they interact in shaping contemporary Algerian identity and mental health?
If you are interested in adapting the HITT-Q for your country, cultural context, or specific population, you can contact the authors of the instrument, Dr. Claire Starrs and Dr. Vera Bekesh, for consultation and to coordinate international research collaboration.
Or contact the author of the Ukrainian adaptation, Tetiana Stanislavska—namaste4people@gmail.com—and she will help facilitate the connection.