Abstract
Background
In the US, recent years have seen a significant increase in the number of internationally adopted children, especially those from China, with congenital medical conditions. To date, there is little research on the long-term wellbeing of international adoptees with congenital medical conditions.
Method
We investigated the relationship between congenital conditions and post-adoption mental disorder diagnosis and treatment in 235 female youth who were adopted from China about 15 years prior. The youth provided survey data on type of congenital conditions that they had, their developmental difficulties at the time of adoption, type of mental disorders that they currently had and the type of treatments that they were currently receiving.
Results
At adoption, the adoptees with congenital medical conditions were, on average, 20 months older than those without congenital medical conditions and had more developmental difficulties. The adopted youth who had two or more congenital conditions at adoption were more than twice as likely as their peers without congenital conditions to have mental disorder diagnoses (62.5% versus 27.63%), and >2.5 times as likely to be receiving treatments (54.17% versus 20.39%). Youth with two or more congenital medical conditions at adoption were 5.5 times as likely as their peers with no congenital conditions to currently have three or more mental disorder diagnoses (33.3% versus 5.9%), and were about 3 times as likely as their peers with no congenital conditions to be receiving medical/psychological treatments (25.0% versus 8.55%). Path analysis showed that developmental difficulties at adoption functioned as a full mediator between the number of congenital conditions at adoption and current number of current mental disorders and number of treatments.