Adoptees more likely to commit suicide

Lorraine

A new study has found that adopted teens were almost four times more likely to attempt suicide than those who lived with their natural parents, even after adjustment for factors associated with suicidal behavior such as psychiatric disorder symptoms, personality traits, family environment, and academic disengagement. Girls were more likely than boys to attempt suicide. About 75 percent of the adopted teens (more than 1,200 all living in Minnesota) in the study were adopted before the age of two and were foreign born—mostly from South Korea. [1]

All of the adopted kids, who were between 11 and 21 years old during the study period, had been taken in by their families before age two, and had a biologically unrelated teenage sibling in the same home. Although this study could not determine why the adopted teens were more likely to attempt suicide,
the authors note that other research has suggested burdens carried by adopted children that may be contributing factors. Almost three quarters of the adopted children were born abroad, most of the foreign-born children were from South Korea and 60 percent of those were girls.

I read the study today but hardly had a reaction because this finding adds to the growing body of literature about adoption and suicide, a topic that I lived through when my daughter committed suicide in 2007. Another adoption reformer and author from my generation, Mirah Riben, also had a daughter who committed suicide. I remember hearing long ago about the adopted daughter of the writer Shana Alexander who committed suicide. Another first mother emailed me yesterday to tell me that the counselor she saw after her daughter found her, and then rejected her, was an adoptive mother whose (adopted) daughter committed suicide. Though my daughter had epilepsy, which is also a marker for suicide, the effect of her being adopted cannot be summarily ignored. Adoption and epilepsy in her case went hand in hand, thus increasing the probability that she would one day take her own life. She made several attempts before she succeeded in what she seemed to want so very much.

Yet each time an adopted person commits suicide, to the families involved, it feels like an isolated event. It happens only to us.

But apparently adoptee suicide is from from a random occurance.

WHEN YOU GOOGLE SUICIDE AND ADOPTION
Though we are all statistics of one sort or another, this just happens to be a very grim one. I now fall into the category of  "birth mother whose daughter committed suicide." Oddly enough, I have less of an emotional trigger hearing or talking about it than I do when presented an invitation to a baby shower or pictures of friend's new grandkids, because that immediately, terrifyingly takes me back to the distress and turmoil of relinquishing my daughter--and reminds me of that oxytocin study reported here last week. Though the new study on adoptee suicide is making news, I had looked into the subject earlier, and written about it before, for my memoir-in-progress, that Hole in my Heart: 

While there are no good statistics on adoptees who commit actually suicide in this country, Google “suicide and adoption” and what pops up is a 2001 entry from Pediatrics, “Adoption as a Risk Factor for Attempted Suicide during Adolescence.”[2] In 1990, the Search Institute of Minneapolis, which studies what factors help children succeed, found that teenagers who were adopted as infants are more at risk for suicide than non-adopted youth. [3] A 2005 Swedish study found that international adoptees clearly were at greater risk for suicide attempts and deaths than adoptees from the same country, but both groups had increased risk compared to non-adoptees.[4] The researchers at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine looked at more than 6,500 students in grades seven through twelve and found that nearly eight percent (7.6) of those who were adopted had attempted suicide in the past year, compared with only three percent of their peers. They were also more likely to receive psychological counseling, nearly seventeen percent (16.9) of adopted youth compared with eight percent  (8.2) of the non-adopted.

Of course this is not news that is welcome in adoption circles. B. J. Lifton wrote that when she voiced her opinion that the percentage of adoptee suicide was high at a seminar for adoptive parents some years ago, a prominent psychiatrist asked if that could be deleted from the tape. B.J. agreed, but later wrote she was sorry she had.[5] When I mentioned adoption and suicide at an American Adoption Congress conference a few years ago, it was generally ignored. This is not a subject the adoption industry, or even people who attend AAC  conferences, want anyone to talk about. With this new study, it will be harder to ignore, but talking about "adoption and suicide" remains taboo. 

Just as talking about "primal wound" is taboo in some circles. Like anything else, we all have our individual reactions to the various stresses that each of us faces. For some the wound will be much deeper and have a greater lifelong effect; others will seemingly skate over the issue and express little curiosity about their roots or adoption story. But to flat out deny that being relinquished for adoption and raised in an familial environment other than the one we are related to by blood has little to no effect seems to be the height of folly and akin to putting on blinders. Reality is often not pretty.

I'm thinking about this today as I had implored Canadian officials to stop an adoption just last week and return a child to a mother who desperately wants her, as Dusten Brown fights in court after court for the right to raise his own daughter, as we fielded comments last week from a school counselor who claimed many of her students would be better off if they had been adopted, and as somewhere a young woman is considering the "adoption option" that is being made so very attractive by adoption-agency workers as the "loving" choice for her baby. Reality tells a different story. --lorraine

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If the footnotes look different from usual, that's because I'm taking most of this from that Hole in My Heart, my memoir-in-progress. May not be copied in any form or used without permission. Copyright Lorraine Dusky 2013.

[1] Margaret A. Keyes, Stephen M. Malone, Anu Sharma, PhD, William G. Iacono, PhD^a, Matt McGue, Risk of Suicide Attempt in Adopted and Nonadopted Offspring, Pediatrics, 2013. 

                                                                                                                                           

[2] Slap, Goodman and Huang, Adoption as a Risk Factor for Attempted Suicide during Adolescence, Pediatrics, Vol. 108, No. 2 August 2001, p.30. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/108/2/e30 The study included students who were living with their mothers, adoptive  or biological, and had not been separated from them for more than six months. All were in their first marriages, to filter out children of divorce. Not surprisingly, teens who contemplated suicide were more likely to be depressed, smoke cigarettes, engage in delinquent behavior, have low self-esteem and—be female. More recently, Psychiatric Times (January 26, 2009; http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/1367897 ) reported that researchers at the University of Minnesota found that adopted youth  had a higher incidence of clinical disorders (such as ADHD or ODD) than the non-adopted. Any research showing that adopted individuals had a higher incidence of emotional trauma and related problems has always been controversial and met with disdain by many in the adopting community, and generally attributed to the greater income of many adoptive parents, and their acute sensitivity to their children’s welfare. When I mentioned it at a conference a few years ago, it was generally ignored. Other pro-adoption, adoptive-parents writers dismiss it as “garbage research,” as I was repeatedly rebuked when I mentioned it on a PBS news program with Prof. Elizabeth Bartholet of Harvard, adoptive mother and major proponent of international adoption. Interestingly, we were guests the day that "Baby Jessica" or Anna Schmidt, as she was named by her natural parents, was turned over to them.

However, the researchers of the Minnesota study found that these possible migrating factors for the high incidence of adopted teenagers in therapy and otherwise seeking emotional and/or psychiatric counseling did not explain the differences, and that their over-representation is due to the fact that the adoptees are experiencing more of the kinds of behavioral problems for which parents refer their kids. The Minnesota study included 540 non-adopted adolescents born in that state and 692 domestic and international adoptees. At the time of the assessments, the study participants ranged in age from 11 to 21 years, and the average age at time of placement was four months. From the Psychiatric Times: “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). I’ve gotten clinical here because this study has been attacked by adoptive parents on various blogs.

                           

[3] Lost and Found, p. 311.

[4] Annika von Borczyskowski, Anders Hjern MD, PhD, Frank Lindblad MD, PhD,  Bo Vinnerljung PhD., Suicidal Behavior in National and International Adoptees, Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, February 2006, Volume 41,Issue 2, pp 95-102.

[5] Lost and Found, p. 311. 
___________________
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READING
The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child  "As an adoptee, I could not have written this book better myself. It is an extremely insightful book which opened up a world of understanding to myself and also to my loved ones. It helped me understand why I am the way that I am, why I do some of the things that I do, why I struggle with love in my life, and why I have this subconscious fear of abandonment and trust

This book is a definite "must read" for all parents of adopted children. I know that as a parent you will resist believing in the The Primal Wound but you must for the benefit of your children. You will learn to understand your adopted children and will be able to help them throughout their lives - sometimes even in the smallest way, i.e. the simple reassurance that you WILL return home after work.I met my birth family at 30 years old. Then I read this book a few years later. This book made a difference in my life. It will make a difference in your life, too."--Coco Ventura, at Amazon