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I have a few friends who adopted children because of various reasons. Most of them are going through challenges and they persevered because of love.

Here is a study that seems to indicate that people must move cautiously and understand more beyond the birth certificate.

Excerpt:

According to a recent study conducted by researchers from the University of Minnesota, adoption is linked with a higher prevalence of mental health problems in children than in non-adopted ones. The study went as follows:

The adoption study compared a random sample of 540 adolescents born in Minnesota, who were not adopted, with a representative sample of adoptees (514 international adoptees and 178 domestic adoptees). The children had been placed by the 3 largest adoption agencies in Minnesota.3

“All of the kids were adopted within the first 2 years of life, but the great majority were adopted within the first year,” said Margaret A. Keyes, PhD, lead author of the study and a research psychologist. “The average age at placement was 4 months. So it is not as if you are looking at 3- and 4-year-olds coming over on a plane from a faraway country.”

At the time of the assessments, the study participants ranged in age from 11 to 21 years. The assessments were rigorous and involved use of the Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents-Revised (DICA-R) and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R (SCID-II). (Both had been updated to cover DSM-IV criteria.) The modified DICA-R was also administered to mothers of participants to assess disorders in their children (Kaplan, 2009).

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