Romanian orphans suffer years later
U.K. study finds children much more likely to have ADHD
LONDON — Romanian children adopted from overcrowded orphanages in the 1990s were more likely to suffer psychological problems as adults compared with other children taken in by British families, according to a decades-long study.
Doctors say the findings suggest there is a critical window when young brains develop that may determine someone’s future mental health, and that some problems might not be fixable later.
“These kids came to the U.K. in desperate conditions, very malnourished and very stunted in growth,” said Edmund SonugaBarke of the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, the study’s lead author.
“Despite the families’ absolute investment in the children, a good proportion of them still have significant problems as adults.”
The researchers tracked more than 160 Romanian infants to three-year-olds adopted by British families in the 1990s. The children were checked periodically with questionnaires, IQ tests and interviews, with the latest assessment made at ages 22 to 25.
Sonuga-Barke and colleagues looked for conditions including attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, symptoms of autism including poor communication and social skills, and emotional issues such as anxiety and depression. The results from the Romanians were compared with those from 52 children adopted within Britain.
The Romanian children who spent more than six months in the institutions seemed to fare the worst. Sonuga-Barke said that children who were in the orphanages for longer than six months were seven times more likely to have ADHD when compared with children adopted in Britain.
Of the 107 Romanians included in the latest assessment, 25 had ADHD versus one of the 38 British children. A dozen of the Romanians met the criteria for autism, compared with one of the British children.
The study was published online in the journal Lancet.
“This shows that children exposed to adversity, even for short periods, can have long-lasting effects, which is quite sobering,” said Frank Verhulst of Erasmus University Medical Centre in the Netherlands, who was not part of the research. He said some of the anti-social tendencies seen in some of the children and adults might have been coping mechanisms.