Recording is for delegates only
About the session
Talk title – Intergenerational consequences of racism in the United Kingdom: consulting with parents and teenagers to understand links between parents’ exposure to racism and family mental health
Intergenerational Consequences of Racism: Understanding the Impact on Families and Mental Health explores how racism experienced by parents can shape the mental health and wellbeing of children and future generations. Drawing on new UK‑based research, in this webinar Dr. Yasmin Ahmadzadeh examines the ways in which structural racism and everyday discrimination cascade through family relationships, affecting parenting, attachment, and children’s emotional and behavioural development.
The session will highlight how parents’ experiences of racism can indirectly influence offspring mental health, with implications for depression, anxiety, and other psychological difficulties. It will also showcase how community‑led research and focus group discussions can surface lived experiences, invisible stressors, and resilience‑building strengths within racially minoritised families. Participants will gain a clearer understanding of how intergenerational racism operates in the UK context and how trauma‑informed, anti‑racist approaches can be integrated into clinical practice, education, and social care.
Experiences of racism are linked to negative physical and mental health outcomes among those exposed. These negative outcomes can have cascading effects in families, when parents’ experiences of racism indirectly impact offspring. This talk will describe new research focussed on families in the United Kingdom, canvassing community knowledge and perspectives, exploring how existing family research on racism relates to lived experiences in the United Kingdom.
We conducted four online focus groups with 14 parents of school-aged children and 14 adolescents who had experienced racism in the United Kingdom. Participants were asked what children know of parents’ experiences of racism, and how these experiences can impact parent-child interactions, mental health and well-being. Focus group recordings were transcribed, coded and analysed through iterative categorisation.
Analyses drew four themes from participants’ insights. Together, themes illuminated the pervasive nature of racism experienced by some families in the United Kingdom. Parent and child experiences of racism were connected and co-occurring, with indirect effects impacting mental health and well-being in both generations. These experiences were linked to both positive and negative changes in parenting behaviour and parent-child relationships, which could be moderated by intersecting identities such as the parent’s generational status for immigration to the United Kingdom. Social cohesion, safe spaces and education programmes were highlighted for future intervention.
Avenues for future research are discussed to support development of equitable intervention and support strategies to prevent racism and support those affected.
Learning objectives:
- To recognise how racism impacts families in the UK
- To understand how focus group discussions are used in research
- To consider how public perspectives can help shape future research
Meet the speaker
Dr. Yasmin Ahmadzadeh is a Research Fellow at King’s College London. Her research is focused on understanding how common mental health concerns run in families. She will be talking about her recent project exploring the intergenerational consequences of racism in the United Kingdom, conducted in collaboration with undergraduate students who had lived experiences of racism affecting their families. Dr Ahmadzadeh holds a PhD from King’s College London, exploring familial risk for anxiety and depression – looking at both environmental and genetic transmission. Dr Ahmadzadeh completed her BSc in Neuroscience with Industrial/Professional Experience at the University of Manchester.