Rachael Louise Healy

This project examines intergenerational trauma in Catholic West Belfast. It links urban landscapes stemming from the three-decade long sectarian civil war known as the Troubles, to the myriad ways “trauma” is experienced and expressed among working-class Catholic teens who were born after war, yet live in a neighbourhood which experienced devastating violence. Focusing on a community known as “the Falls”, my ethnography shows how teens frame a significant youth mental health crisis through a new vernacular of intergenerational trauma, informed by their caregivers and the lingering violence embedded in neighbourhood space. Working with families with teenagers, youth-workers, and community mental health nurses, I examine the neighbourhood as a site where local narratives of intergenerational trauma become embedded in collective memories of violence. These new vernaculars of political violence illustrate how post-war communities produce frameworks for understanding new health crises in conjunction with memories of violence, and how such vernaculars become rooted in the neighbourhood itself. This research furthers insights into how post-war landscapes affect the mental health of youth who inherit ongoing realities of sectarian violence – materially and discursively. It thus sheds light on the ways painful pasts remain materially present, shaping mental health outcomes generations after war ends.