Adopted teens may be at higher risk of suicide

Adopted children may be m?re likely than the?r non-adopted siblings to ?ttempt ?uicide, according to a new U.S.
study.
Resea??hers urged doctors to be on th? l?okout for signs of trouble in adopted teen patients but said parents sho?l? not be overly alarmed by th? results.
"While our findings suggest that adoptees may have an elevated risk for suicide attempt, the majority of the adopted individuals in our study were psychologically well-adjusted," l?ad author Margaret Ke?es, a psychologist at the Unive?sity of Minnesota in Minneapolis, said.

Suicide is the third l?ading c?use of death for young people between the ages of 10 and 24 years old, accor?ing to the Centers for Di?ease Control and Pr?vention. According to the agency, 4,600 yout? ??aths each y?ar ?n th? U.?. are suicides, and a much larger number of young people make attempts to take their own lives.

Previous rese?rch in Sweden fo?nd that adopted kids in that count?y w?re more likely to attempt suicide than nonadopted kids, but no comparable ?tudy had been done in the U.S., according to Ke?es and her coaut?o?? writing in the journal Pediatrics.

They ?xamined data from an exist?ng University of Minnesota study of 692 adopted children and 540 nonadopted siblings in Minnes?ta.
All of the adopted kids, who were between 11 and 21 years old during the study period, ha? been taken in by their families before age two and had a biologically unrelate? teenage sibling in the ?ame home.
Almost three quarters of the adopted childr?n were born ab?oad, most of the foreign-born ??ildren were from South Korea and 60 percent of those were g?rls.

At the b?ginning of the study, and again a?out thre? ?ear? later, the resea?chers asked particip?ting parents and kids if either of the children had ma?e a suicide attempt.
Over the three years of the study, 56 children attempted suicide at lea?t once, ?cc?rding to the family members' reports. Of those kids, 47 we?e adopted and nine wer? not ado?ted.
When previous self-harm behavior was taken into acc?unt, researchers calculate? that adopted teens w?re 3.7 times more likely to att?mpt suicide than the othe? teens.

When the researchers adjuste? for other factors often linked with suicid?l thinking or behavior, including drug use, dep?es?ion, aca??mic str?ggles and personalit? tra?t? like alienation and impuls?vity, the incr?ase? risk for adopted kids remained.
Although this study co?ld not determine why the adopted teens were more likely to attempt suicide, the authors note that other research has suggested burdens carried ?y ad?pted children that may be contributing factors.

In the Sw?dish study, f?r example, researchers showed that subst?nce abuse, suicidal b?havior and mental illness among the biological parents of domestically ad?pted kids could explain about one thi?d ?f the children's increased ris? for su?cide.
For children adopted from abroad, Keyes' team writes, there is al?o the possibility that loss of cultural identity and experience of ethnic discrimination only add to the press?res on a child.

"Other mediating factors, not considered in our study, may include: heritable risk, prenatal factors, factors unique to relinquishment by a biological parent, early trauma, weak attachment to adoptive families and loss of cultural identity and ethnic discrimination," Keyes told Reuters H?alth by email.

Two of those factors may be most critical in determining suicide risk, accord?ng to Ritch C. Sa?in-William?, ? p?ofessor of developmental forensic psychology ba jobs at Cornell University in Ithaca, namely: genet?cs and early trauma.

"Many of us believe that these two might well be the most important distinguishing factors separating the two groups, answering the question of why were these babies put up for adoption in the first place," he told ?eut?rs He?lth.
The small siz? of the study ?nd l?mited ethnic diversity make these results not generalizable to the whole of the United States, Savin-Willi?ms said.

The study was also limited t? self-reported suicide attempts and did not distinguish between types of attempts, some of which can be far mor? serious and worrisome than others, ?avin-Williams noted.
"We do not believe that adoptive parents should be alarmed by these findings," Keyes said.
"However, parents and clinicians may want to be aware of the increased potential for suicide attempt in adopted adolescents who evidence other risks for suicidal behavior," she said.

SOURCE: bit.ly/1eAtrA2 Pediatrics, online September 9, 2013.

Posted by laylapagetfjpeso on Wed, 12/10/2014 - 4:21am